


Look On Tempests

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Childhood Friends AU, Deaf Fitz AU, F/M, expanded from a bullet point ficlet by popular demand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:30:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7515175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo Fitz was born deaf and life has never been easy because of it. Then in sixth grade, he meets determined, plucky Jemma Simmons, a girl who teaches herself sign language just to get close to him. After nearly ten years of friendship, they head off to university together despite the differences in their dreams. </p><p>Fitz wants to be a writer someday. Writing and reading are the only things he’s ever felt “normal” doing. Jemma wants to be a doctor. Helping is the only thing that’s ever felt right. </p><p>In college, everything begins to change. Fitz joins a group of Deaf and HoH people his own age, finally feeling like he belongs somewhere. Jemma feels like she’s losing her best friend in the world and only makes things worse with the topic of her Senior Synthesis. </p><p>Good thing love speaks more than one language, and one of them is ASL.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> By popular demand, here's the expanded Deaf Fitz AU! I hope that everyone likes this :) This first chapter is just the prologue of sorts, but I promise the action will pick up soon. 
> 
> I sincerely hope that this fic does a good job at representation. If anyone has comments or concerns about my depiction of deafness/HoH, then please let me know. I'm more than open to suggestions and dialogue about it. 
> 
> The title comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:   
> "Love is not love  
> Which alters when it alteration finds,  
> Or bends with the remover to remove:  
> O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,   
> That looks on tempests, and is never shaken."

**_October, Sixth Grade:_ **

 

This is his third new school in as many years. Leo Fitz sits with his head down at a table in the outdoor cafeteria, trying to eat as quickly as possible and run back to his next classroom.

 

It’s hard enough to be the new kid anywhere, but it’s a hell of a lot harder when you’re deaf. He doesn’t need to be able to hear to see the way that kids point at him. He can see their shoulders shaking with laughter when he trips over the leg of the table on his way to the trashcan.

 

He’s twelve years old, painfully shy and tremendously awkward.

 

Which is why he’s so surprised when a bright-eyed, pretty girl pops up beside the trash can with a wide smile.

 

“I’m Jemma Simmons,” she says, but of course he can’t hear her. He’s working on his lip-reading, but as far as he can tell she’s said something like “I’m Jenna.”

 

Grimacing, he goes through the usual motions. He points at his ear and shakes his head apologetically. He swears that one day he’ll stop apologizing for not fitting in to this world, but that day is not today.

 

She looks stricken for a moment and his stomach sinks.

 

He knows she won’t understand, but he starts signing rapidly with his hands. It gives him something to do and shows her that he really can’t hear her.

 

 _“I’m sorry,”_ he signs. “ _I’m deaf. I’m trying to learn to lip-read but I’m not very good yet.”_

He’s incredibly surprised when she smiles softly and nods. She chews on her lip and frowns for a moment before she turns the baby pink backpack on her back to her hip. She pulls out a post-it not from the front pocket and writes in a purple gel pen.

 

_My name is Jemma Simmons. You should eat with me tomorrow._

He can’t imagine why on earth this girl would want to eat with a person who can’t even hear her—Fitz is sure he makes horrible company to anyone who doesn’t speak sign language—but he nods just to appease her. She looks satisfied with his response and gives his arm a squeeze.

 

He’s hardly been touched by anyone other than his mum. At every school he’s been to, he’s been the untouchable child, the kid who doesn’t understand what’s being said.

 

Jemma skips off to her next class and he watches her go for a long moment. When he gets home from school that night and sits down for dinner with his mother, she signs to him hopefully. This is the last school in the district she can transfer him to.

 

_“Did you make any friends today?”_

 

He smiles, his cheeks burning up pink. _“Kind of. I think.”_

He’s sure his mother is going to cry and his chest swells with pride. He wants to be normal for her, wants to be the kind of son she can brag about to her friends.

 

She loves him more than anything, even kept loving him when his miscreant of a father had walked out on them. Fitz didn’t need to hear that last argument to know it was about him. His father had never bothered to learn to sign. He’d refused despite his mother’s begging.

 

His mother has a skip in her step as she cleans up their food so even though he’s terrified to go sit with Jemma Simmons at lunch tomorrow, he’s determined to try. If not for himself, for his mum.

 

***

 

The next day, he finds Jemma waiting for him at a table in the corner. She’s sitting with a group of other kids his age, a few that he recognizes from some of his classes the day before. His heart pounds uncomfortably in his chest but he remembers the excitement in his mum’s eyes the night before.

 

Steeling himself, he squares his shoulders and trudges forward, gripping his tray with white knuckles.

 

As soon as he sits down, a few of the kids find reasons to leave. He can see Jemma’s mouth moving but he can’t hear what she says. All he knows is that she looks angry. He diverts his eyes to his food and she taps his hand.

 

He looks up at her, face burning with some kind of shame, and she slides a tablet across the table toward him.

 

 _I’m glad you came_ , it says. _I was afraid you wouldn’t. Where did you go to school before?_

He pops a fry in his mouth before he types back on the little device. _I went to John Garrett Elementary last year._

She scrunches up her nose. _I know someone who went there. Grant Ward, real jerk if you ask me._

 

He thinks of all the times Grant Ward threw the dodgeball at him when his back was turned, all the times he’d smacked the books out of his hand.

 

_Total jerk. Most people seemed to like him though._

_I don’t like people like that. No one should ever think they’re better than anyone else. I don’t care how much money they have or how good they are at sports._

He can read a certain kind of fierceness in her words, matching the burning fire in her eyes. He decides right then and there that she may truly be his first real friend. He types back, and they hardly eat at all. They’re so busy communicating using the technology on the table that they don’t even notice that everyone else has left. They don’t realize that the lunch period is over and they’ve only eaten half of their lunch.

 

Jemma blushes, tucking her hair behind her ears and giving him a wave. He looks down at the tablet.

 

_See you again tomorrow, I hope._

He grins. He doesn’t want to get ahead of himself, but this feels like it could be something great.

 

***

 

That very same afternoon, Jemma Simmons clambers into her mother’s car and immediately begins talking. This is nothing new for Trish Simmons, who has long since become used to her daughter’s chatty personality.

 

“I need you to take me to Barnes and Noble,” Jemma declares.

 

“We just went four days ago,” Trish reminds her daughter. “Don’t tell me you’ve finished that entire series already, Jemma.”

 

Jemma laughs and shakes her head. “No, mum. I want to get a book about sign language.”

 

Trish stops at a red light and turns to her daughter with raised eyebrows. “Sign language? What brought this on?”

 

“There’s this new boy at school and he’s deaf. I want to be able to talk to him.”

 

“Jemma,” her mother says warningly. “Don’t turn this poor boy into one of your projects.”

 

Jemma huffs and crosses her arms. “Mum! He’s not a _project_ , he’s a _person_! I would never do that.”

 

Trish smiles affectionately, patting Jemma’s hair. “Okay, dear. I just know how you get.”

 

“ _Mum_ ,” Jemma whines. “Will you take me or not?”

 

“Of course I will, pet,” Trish sighs, turning left toward the bookstore instead of the right turn that would take them home.

 

“Thank you, Mum.”

 

Jemma buys three books on sign language and Deaf culture, staying up all night long reading them. The next afternoon, she runs straight to her room to watch video lessons.

 

It takes her three days and a lot of frustration before she finally gets it right, but she’s incredibly excited when she finds Fitz the following Monday.

 

She taps him on the shoulder at their usual lunch table, and as soon as he turns around, she slowly begins to sign.

 

“ _My name is Jemma_ ,” she says.

 

His eyebrows fly up toward his hairline and he covers his mouth, a strangled laugh nearly escaping. She has yet to hear his voice, in the week or so that they’ve been eating lunch together. According to her books, many Deaf people choose not to take speech classes and prefer not to use their voices. She has no idea if Fitz has or has not taken those lessons. She just knows that he clearly doesn’t feel comfortable making any kind of noise in front of her.

 

She can live with that. Especially because of how excited he looks that she’s actually _signing_.

 

She only gets better from there, especially with his help. He gently corrects her, suggests specific online lessons and books, and helps her through the entire process.

 

By the time they go to high school, she can speak with him fluidly. Everyone else watches them in awe as their hands move deftly, signing over one another.

 

***

 

**_September, Eleventh Grade_ **

 

 _“Jemma, you’re going overboard,”_ he says, watching her type furiously on her laptop in her living room.

 

She throws her hands up in frustration before signing back. “ _Ugh, Fitz!”_

 

_“Don’t Ugh Fitz me!”_

_“Don’t you think you would have had an easier time if more people had been able to speak your language?”_ Jemma demands.

 

He rolls his eyes. _“Don’t start this with me, Simmons.”_

 

_“Don’t call me Simmons!”_

Despite his misgivings, Jemma continues on her crusade to have an ASL class taught as a language credit at their high school. Grudgingly, he accompanies her in her movement. He helps her stand in front of the grocery store in the middle of town to gather signatures for her petition. He accompanies her to school board meetings and does his best not to roll his eyes.

 

He knows what she’s trying to do. She wants to make their town—and the world—a more accessible place for him. She’s incredibly well-meaning, fiercely protective of him and loyal nearly to a fault. What she lacks in emotional savvy, she makes up for in sheer determination.

 

He’s grateful for her every day. She had been one of the most popular girls in school, until she’d started eating lunch with him. She still had other friends, certainly more than he did, but she spends most of her time with him. In fact, she spends almost _all_ of her time with him. Even their families have become friends.

 

Jemma wonders if everyone feels this way. She wonders if everyone has a person that they never want to be without. It’s a strange feeling, but it’s why she insists on applying to all of the same schools when it’s time to go to college.

 

Fitz knows she could get in to better schools for her program. After all, he wants to eventually get a PhD in English Literature. He’d always loved reading. It had been one of the things that he’d always felt comfortable in. Reading and writing let him go to a different world, a world where everyone could hear him and understand him, and he could hear and understand them.

 

But Jemma wants to be a doctor someday, and he’s sure that she could go to a better pre-med program than the one at the liberal arts school they end up at.

 

She goes for him, he’s sure of it. She’s pretty much been following him around since the day they met. He’s glad for it, honestly, but he hates feeling like a burden. He hates feeling like he’s holding her back, this beautiful and brilliant young woman who’s been beside him for what feels like forever.

 

He can’t imagine his life without her in it.

 

He doesn’t always understand that she feels the same way.

 

Regardless, they load up his 2002 Ford Explorer and drive to college together, Jemma excitedly bouncing in the front seat.


	2. Chapter One

**[September, Senior Year of University]**

 

Fitz rolls his neck around, trying to release the tension in his muscles that has built up from hunching over a GRE practice exam. He glances over and sees Jemma, hair piled on top of her head with a pen between her teeth as she reads over her MCAT practice scores.

 

He can’t hear her, but he’s sure she’s huffing and sighing every time she has to remove the pen from her mouth and mark an answer wrong.

 

She’s too hard on herself. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that this woman is the same little girl who insisted on teaching herself a whole new language just to know him. Other times, he swears she’s exactly the same.

 

He finds himself so distracted just watching her that he loses all track of time. The iWatch on his wrist vibrates, indicating that he’s run out of time to complete his section. He rolls his eyes at himself and shuts the GRE book, shoving it aside. Jemma looks up at his movements, quirking an eyebrow.

 

 _“Giving up already?”_ she teases

 

He shoots her a look. _“It’s a Saturday morning.”_

 

She grins. _“I know. And you promises to do this with me.”_

 

 _“I’m not even sure I want to go to grad school anymore,”_ he reminds her. _“I’m almost done with my book.”_

She stiffens. It’s an argument they’ve had a lot lately, that he might stop after graduation and try to get a job as a writer while he finishes writing his novel. It’s what he’s always wanted, anyway, and he’s starting to think he might not need a graduate degree to do it.

 

But Jemma is going to medical school, and she has some deluded idea that they’ll keep going to the same school even if they’re getting different degrees.

 

 _“Keep you options open,”_ she signs back after a beat. _“For me.”_

 

Fitz breathes out a little laugh and shakes his head. _“One of these days all of your ‘for me’s’ are going to get me in trouble.”_

 

Jemma just smiles cheekily, looking very proud of herself. _“I just need fifteen more minutes. Then we can go.”_

He leans back in his chair in relief, nodding his assent as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He scrolls through his emails, finding an unread message from his mum.

 

**From: Pamela Fitz**

**To:    Leo Fitz**

**Subj: HOH GROUP!!!!**

**Hi Leo,**

**I just saw this link on one of the message boards and it’s right near your school. I think you should give it a try, love. I know how much you love working at the school and I think you could meet some really great people this way. Consider it and let me know if you end up going!**

His interest piqued, he clicks on the link attached to his mum’s email message. Lo and behold, it’s a Facebook event titled The Music Isn’t Too Loud: HoH/Deaf Social Group. The introductory message is written by a pretty girl around his own age named Daisy Johnson, introducing herself as a 21 year old computer science student looking to find other 20-somethings who are hard of hearing or deaf.

 

_Let’s make our own space, where hearing aids are commonplace, ASL is just talking, and we don’t have to whip out the notepad on our phone just to place an order at a restaurant. Meetings on Thursday nights at 8 p.m., Phil’s Diner. Come hungry. The cheese fries are the bomb._

He can’t help the excited flutter in his stomach. There are already 8 people listed as “attending.” Aside from the children at the HoH and Deaf school that he volunteers at, he’s never been in a room with that many people like him. Ever.

 

He can only imagine how it would feel, to sit in a group of people and not have Jemma interpreting for him. To be able to talk freely with people who understand him with ease, who he can understand right back.

 

Before he can change his mind, he replies “attending.” Jemma shuts her book and jerks her head toward the door.

 

“Ready?” she asks.

 

He nods eagerly and slips his phone in his pocket. For some reason, he doesn’t mention the email from his mom or his RSVP to this event on Thursday. He normally tells her everything, but something about this feels private. For some reason he thinks it might hurt her. He’s not even sure why, really, but it’s the first thing he’s ever done that he can’t really invite her to. The event is clearly not for hearing people, and he doesn’t want to make a bad impression by dragging her along and invading the space.

 

So he doesn’t say anything. He follows after her and they spend their Saturday like they usually do, taking a bike ride down to the lake near their college. He writes, she does homework, and they make their way back to the building where they both have their own studio apartments.

 

For the first time, he’s glad they didn’t decide to room together off-campus, as they had originally planned and like everyone expected them to.

 

It gives him time to do his research, checking out the Facebook profiles of the other attendees.

 

Bobbi Morse is 25, apparently an incredibly tall blonde, and seems to be some kind of martial artist. He’s a little bit afraid of her, but she’s written an exceedingly friendly welcome post on the event page so he figures she can’t be that bad. In her photos is a shorter man, more along the lines of Fitz’s own size, wearing hearing aids. His name is Lance Hunter and it appears that they’re dating. Someone named Mack Mackenzie (which Fitz is sure can’t be his given name) rounds out the rest of the attendees.

 

They’re all in his age group, all with some kind of impaired hearing ability. And all close enough to actually _meet_ every single week. Another zing of excitement shoots through him. Jemma swings open his apartment door around 9:30 p.m. with no warning. She never gives any warning, though, and he supposes he doesn’t give her much warning either.

 

At least she can hear him coming, he thinks a little bitterly.

 

He slams his laptop shut before she can see what he’s up to. She frowns and then shoots him an exaggerated wink.

 

“ _Porn?”_

 

He coughs out a strangled little noise and shakes his head vigorously. _“No!”_

 

 _“Of course not,”_ she signs in response. “ _You’re not like that.”_

 

Deep down, he’s sure she means that he’s not the kind of guy to watch porn even when they have plans to watch a movie of a less sexual persuasion, but he can’t help but feel like she means he’s not a sexual being at all. She’s never really seen him that way, clearly, but she’s never even seemed to consider the fact that he could be that way with anyone else.

 

He can’t help but wonder if she would feel that way about him if he was hearing.

 

He tries not to linger on it. Jemma sets up the film with captioning and settles in beside him. She comfortably leans into his side and he wriggles his arm out from under her and onto the back of the couch to make room.

 

Halfway through, he watches the little volume bar as she turns it up.

 

He wonders what was bothering her. He supposes he’ll never know.

 

***

 

As the week crawls on, his excitement, and subsequent anxiety, about the group meeting on Thursday grows and grows. His discomfort at omitting the information from Jemma also only grows, so he does the only thing that seems to help—he avoids her.

 

The real problem is that Jemma Simmons is not one for being avoided.

 

She pops up out front of his Environmental Literature Seminar, grabbing his arm immediately. He’s gotten pretty good at reading lips—especially since her mouth always moves when she’s signing. He’s pretty sure she’s not even _saying_ anything verbally, but it’s some kind of instinct for her.

 

He finds it infuriatingly adorable.

 

 _“Where have you been?”_ she questions with a furrowed brow.

 

_“What do you mean?”_

 

Jemma rolls her eyes. “ _You know exactly what I mean. I haven’t seen you in days.”_

He shrugs as casually as he can, doing his best to pretend like he hasn’t been purposefully been dodging her since their movie night _. “I’ve just been busy I guess.”_

Her frown only deepens. _“Too busy to talk to me for ten seconds?”_

_“We don’t have to do everything together, you know.”_

 

He’s not even sure why he said it, but as soon as it’s out there, he can’t take it back. She looks like he slapped her across the face and the overwhelming twist in his gut feels like he did.

 

 _“I didn’t mean that,”_ he tries, but Jemma is blinking rapidly and not looking at him.

 

If they weren’t in public, he’d use his voice and speak to her. He’d taken speech classes as a kid—his mum wanted him to have the option—but after a few ill-fated attempts at speaking to the other kids in elementary school, he decided not to try.

 

Not with Jemma, though. It’s not something he does often, but if he needs to get her attention when they’re alone, he’ll call out to her. He’ll laugh in front of her, too, often without abandon.

 

She’s his best friend in the world and he trusts her with everything, even the things that he’s too afraid to show anyone else.

 

Except for this. For some reason, he just can’t seem to bring himself to share this with her.

 

She finally looks at him with big, glassy brown eyes and he gulps nervously. Her hands tremble lightly as she signs.

 

 _“You’re right,”_ she says. _“We don’t have to do everything together._ ”

 

She turns on her heel and walks away as quickly as she can. Her arms wrap around her waist and he has to take a solid half a minute to breath and collect himself. He can’t shout out for her, not in public like this, and he’s not really sure what he would say or do anyway.

 

It’s time she realized that he’s just holding her back. All of the parties she’s skipped, dates she’s said no to, medical schools she hasn’t considered, all for him. They met when they were so young and he knows that she loves him, but he also knows it’s in the same way that siblings love each other—obligatory, unconditional, and complicated.

 

Maybe, just maybe, she’ll start making decisions for herself if he starts doing the same. He’ll start with this group. He’ll start by trying to find a place that’s not attached to her, because at some point, he’s going to have to. At some point, Jemma will realize what he is—a burden. An obligation. Then she’ll move on to have a _normal_ life, the kind of life he’ll never have, and he’ll be alone. Again. Like he was for all of those years before her.

 

He has to make his own normal, because he’ll never be a part of hers. She’ll understand, some day, when she’s married to some tall blonde named Tad with three kids, a golden retriever, and a medical degree from a prestigious institution.

 

Fitz is sure that this is the right decision. He just wishes that being right wouldn’t feel so miserable.

 

***

 

He texts her a few times after their blow out and receives radio silence. As Fitz paces nervously near the diner just before the meet-up, he looks at the chain of texts and wills her to answer. Hearing from her would give him the confidence he needs to go meet these people.

 

**[Fitz:] Hey Jemma. Listen, I’m really sorry about what I said. Let’s go to that awful restaurant you like, I’ll buy.**

**[Fitz:] Morning. I tried bringing you tea at your morning lab but you weren’t there. Are you feeling okay? You never skip class.**

**[Fitz:] Come on. I’ve said way worse things before.**

 

**[Fitz:] I didn’t mean it. You know that. Let’s talk.**

He’s not very good at staying away from her. He never has been. When she doesn’t respond to his newest text—sent three hours ago—he stuffs his phone in his pocket and steels his resolve.

 

He swings open the door to the diner and finds them easily—a group of people around his own age in a large corner booth, rapidly signing to each other. He recognizes many of them from their Facebook photos, and he approaches cautiously. Daisy taps Bobbi on the arm and points at him with a wide smile.

 

_“I told you he would come.”_

 

The blonde rolls her eyes but nods at him with a friendly smile. _“Hey, you must be Leo Fitz. I’m Bobbi.”_

 

“ _Glad you could make it_ ,” the guys he recognizes as Hunter says.

 

 _“Welcome to the crew_ ,” a hulking man shoved into the corner grins. His arm is around a small woman with a French braid in her hair. The only two people at the table wearing hearing aids are Daisy and Hunter.

 

 _“I’m Mack,”_ the giant man greets. _“This is YoYo.”_

 

The girl under his arm huffs and glares at him. “ _My name is Elena.”_

 

Mack shakes his head, chest shaking with a chuckle.

 

“ _Nice to meet you all,”_ he says nervously. He perches at the edge of the booth next to Daisy. “ _I just go by Fitz.”_

 

A guy in a leather jacket enters the diner and jogs toward them, comfortably bowling over Elena as he slides into the booth. She shoves him off of her with an affectionate smile.

 

 _“This is Joey,”_ she explains. _“We both speak Spanish Sign Language, but we are learning ASL.”_

 

Fitz raises his eyebrows, impressed. He’s never really thought about learning another version of sign other than British and American Sign. He supposes that was a little silly of him, now that he thinks about it.

 

“ _Bob speaks a few different ones_ ,” Hunter explains. Bobbi smiles shyly and nods.

 

 _“So how long have you all known each other?”_ he asks.

 

They explain. Daisy had met Mack in speech class as children, immediately becoming good friends. They attended a specialized school together—similar to the one that Fitz volunteers at. After school, Daisy went into tech. Mack became a mechanic. While he was working at the shop, Elena came in with her car attached to a tow truck, recently moved from Colombia. Joey and Elena met at a community event, and Bobbi and Hunter had tacked onto the group a few months before when they had met Mack at a bar.

 

Fitz is nearly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of happenstance that brought this group together. He looks around a bit awkwardly.

 

_“So I’m the only newbie, huh?”_

 

 _“It would appear so,_ ” Bobbi answers. “ _It’s a little hard to find new people.”_

_“How about you?”_ Daisy asks _. “What brought you here?”_

 

Cheeks burning, he explains the email his received from his mother. He fills them in on the fact that he’s never really hung out with other people that are Deaf or HoH, that he’s spent most of his life with a best friend who is hearing.

 

Daisy leans forward on the table in interest. _“Really? Well how does she talk to you?”_

 

 _“She learned sign,”_ he answers.

 

 _“Wow,”_ Hunter pitches in. _“Seems like a lot for a friend.”_

 

 _“Yeah well, Jemma is…enthusiastic,”_ he tries to elaborate, but it’s hard to even just sum her up like that. Jemma is a lot of things—determined, kind, incorrigible, stubborn, bright, frustrating, lovely—but he’s not exactly going to start in on all of that with strangers.

 

 _“That’s cool that she learned it,”_ Mack adds. _“Glad you’re here though. I know it’s not the same.”_

_“Exactly,”_ Fitz says, relaxing slightly in the booth. _“It’s nice to be in a group of people that I can understand.”_

 

Everyone nods in agreement, even Elena.

 

 _“It does feel nice,”_ she agrees. _“Even though I am still learning, it feels more like home.”_

Mack squeezes her shoulder supportively. “ _We try not to judge here. Even though we’re all pretty different from each other.”_

 

Fitz frowns. _“How so?”_

 

Everyone looks to Daisy, the apparent leader of the group, and she launches into a wordy explanation. She herself is Deaf and was born Deaf. Bobbi lost 100% of her hearing in an accident when she was eight. Hunter was born with about 20% hearing capacity. Mack was hearing until he was eleven, when he also lost the majority of his hearing ability from a traumatic brain injury on a school field trip. Elena was born Deaf, and Joey was born with diminished hearing capacity.

 

 _“We’re all different,”_ Bobbi explains. _“I’m considering getting implants. Hunter uses aids.”_

 

 _“I don’t believe in implants,”_ Daisy cuts in.

 

 _“I’m thinking about getting some aids,”_ Mack jumps in.

 

 _“So basically we’re a motley crew,”_ Hunter grins _. “But we get along.”_

 

 _“Did any of you do speech training?_ ” Fitz asks curiously. He’s always wondered if other people like him did that, and if, like him, they were uncomfortable speaking in front of hearing people.

 

Daisy’s hand flies up and Hunter nods. They’re the only ones, which he supposes makes sense because most of them were hearing for at least part of their life.

 

 _“Do you feel weird talking?”_ Fitz asks.

 

Hunter shrugs, making a vague hand gesture, and Daisy shakes her head vigorously.

_“No way. If people don’t like how I sound, fuck ‘em. I don’t like having to read lips and use a notepad to order Starbucks but I make do. So can they.”_

 

 _“I’m working on it,”_ Hunter supplies. Bobbi smiles at him softly.

 

_“It’s a process. That’s part of what we do.”_

 

 _“It helps to get comfortable with each other,”_ Mack says. “ _It helps build confidence so when we go out there, we can feel a little less—weird_.”

 

Fitz smiles. Even after just thirty or so minutes with these people, he feels more comfortable than he’s ever felt before. Their waiter approaches, a middle-aged man wearing a goofy paper dining hat. To Fitz’s surprise, he signs.

 

_“What’ll it be, kids?”_

 

The shock must be all over his face. Daisy laughs and the waiter does as well.

 

“ _I’m Daisy’s dad.”_

 

 _“This is Phil. He owns the place. He adopted me when I was twelve,”_ Daisy explains _. “I was bounced around a lot in foster care. Everyone wanted a kid who could hear them. But then Phil took me in and he learned ASL for me.”_

 

Fitz is touched. After his own father had bailed from the “stress” of his condition, he’s heartened to know that there are some people out there who don’t view Deaf children as some kind of defect.

 

They all order, a variety of greasy diner food that they all dig into with enthusiasm. It’s incredibly relieving to be in a group of people who primarily eat in silence. He hates when he’s with Jemma and some of their other friends because he can see their mouths moving between bites, but unless he drops all of his stuff, he can’t really communicate.

 

He hates that he and Jemma sit in silence at restaurants. He knows people must think something is strange between them.

 

And just as the thought passes through his mind, his phone vibrates against his leg. He drops his fork as quickly as he can, wriggling in his seat to get it out of his pocket. His heart stops when he sees Jemma’s name on the screen.

 

**[Jemma:] I stopped by to talk but your door is locked. Are you home?**

 

 _Fuck,_ he curses silently.

 

 _“I have to go,”_ he tells his new friends. At least, he hopes they’re his new friends.

 

 _“Lady troubles?”_ Hunter teases.

 

 _“Aw, come on,”_ Daisy interjects. “ _Stay! Whatever is going on, it can wait. We’re going to Hunter’s after this for some seriously awesome movies.”_

 

 _“We found this group of actors that produces sign language films,”_ Bobbi says. _“It’s really cool. Tonight’s pick is a buddy comedy. I bet you’d love it.”_

 

Fitz hesitates. It’s the longest he’s ever gone without seeing or speaking to Jemma. He’s been walking around with a constant ache, but clearly she hasn’t been feeling the same. If she had, it wouldn’t have taken her days to want to talk to him. Besides, he really, really doesn’t want them to think that he’s bailing. He hopes that this can become a regular occurrence and he doesn’t want to ruin it by taking off early. He’s had to miss out on so much his entire life. The last thing he wants is to miss out on an opportunity to be with people who quite literally speak his language.

 

“ _Okay,”_ he concedes. _“That sounds fun.”_

 

Daisy beams excitedly. Mack nods in approval and everyone moves on, returning to picking at their food and arguing about their favorite superheroes. Daisy is all about The Hulk. Elena thinks they’re all irresponsible. Bobbi is partial to Hawkeye, which clearly sparks some kind of weird jealousy in Hunter.

 

They’re fun and funny and they weren’t lying when they said it’s a judgment free zone. It’s the most fun he’s ever had with anyone other than Jemma and the little part of him that always feels strange or annoying is quiet for the first time in his life.

 

Fitz shoves his phone back into his pocket. He forgets to respond to Jemma’s text.


	3. Chapter Two

When Fitz arrives home after watching an incredible movie done entirely in ASL, his stomach falls all the way to the floor.

 

Sitting against his door, her head lolling forward with sleep, is Jemma. She’s curled her sweatshirt around herself like a blanket, brow furrowed with discomfort and restless sleep.

 

With his heart in this throat, he kneels down to gently shake her awake. She startles, eyes opening up wide. She bangs her head against the door—Fitz can feel the wood vibrate against his palm—and he grimaces, immediately going to check the back of her head.

 

Disoriented, she starts talking—vocally—and he watches her lips as carefully as he can.

 

“Where have you been?” she questions clearly, but everything after that is a jumble. She’s talking too quickly, and no matter how much he stares at her mouth, he’s not going to be able to understand her.

 

 _“Sign,”_ he reminds her gently.

 

She huffs. He’s pretty sure that she used a colossal amount of effort not to roll her eyes, and it stings. She’s frustrated and upset and clearly, having to translate herself into something that he can understand, is just one more burden for her.

 

He can’t even let her be hurt in the way that comes naturally to her.

 

It’s a painful reminder of the truth of some things that Daisy had said throughout the night—that even if Jemma is his best friend in the world, she’s never going to be able to understand him, no matter how good she gets at sign or how accommodating she is to his needs. Daisy hadn’t explicitly said it, and he’s sure she never would, but it had been implicit at least to him that he also won’t ever be able to fully understand her.

 

He’ll never know what her voice sounds like. He’ll never hear the sound of her laugh.

 

Those things tear him up inside, even when he’s frustrated with her. Even when he’s a little angry. Even when he’s starting to think that he needs more than just Jemma for the rest of his life.

 

 _“Where have you been?”_ she signs, punctuating her words with angry, sharp motions.

 

 _“I was doing a project,”_ he lies.

 

She narrows her eyes at him. _“For what class?”_

 

He rolls his eyes, which only adds insult to injury in this argument. _“Are you my mum now?”_

 

Jemma hauls herself to her feet. She’s in sweatpants that he recognizes as his. They’re rolled up several times at the waist and it’s infuriatingly cute.

 

“ _I’m your best friend_ ,” she reminds him. There’s hurt in her eyes that he can’t look at. _“I wanted to talk to you after how things happened the other day but I guess not.”_

 

She turns to walk away from him and he grabs her hand to pull her back. She stares at him, glassy-eyed and vulnerable.

 

“ _Come inside_ ,” he requests. He nods toward the door and her eyes flicker toward it. “ _We should talk, I know we should. I’m sorry I was a jerk, Jemma. I really am._ ”

 

She eyes him cautiously. She’s never looked at him with anything other than complete trust and he has to swallow down that bitter pill as he waits for her response.

 

With a tentative little nod, she moves toward the door. He eagerly opens it, letting her lead the way in. He follows closely behind her, his hand on her lower back. She steps faster to escape his touch and his hand clenches into a fist on instinct.

 

She collapses onto his couch, curling into the corner. She leans her cheek against the back cushion and gestures at him. _“Well, you wanted to talk. Then talk.”_

He perches on the armchair that faces the couch and takes a deep breath. _“I’m sorry I’ve been weird, Jemma.”_

_“You could have been—“_ she rants. She pauses as she tries to collect herself, but ultimately she can’t seem to suppress her anger. _“You could have been dead for all I knew.”_

 

Being genuinely angry at Jemma isn’t something that Fitz is accustomed to, but a wave of indignant frustration crashes over him. “ _You think I’m useless.”_

 

Her jaw drops in shock. “ _I said no such thing_.”

 

_“But you were thinking it. You don’t really believe I can do anything for myself and you never have! I’m not a child.”_

 

 _“I never said you were_!”

 

 _“You don’t have to, I know you think it,”_ he responds bitterly. She swallows hard and goes to cross her arms before she remembers that she needs her hands to speak. He’d never really noticed these gestures before, but now he can’t seem to stop noticing them.

 

 _“Believe it or not, Fitz, you don’t know all of my thoughts_.”

 

“ _Then why are you so mad about me having a life outside of you?”_ he retorts.

 

It’s kind of a low blow and he knows that, but he’s so confused. The world is spinning on an opposite axis, because for the first time since he met a certain peppy British girl at middle school, he’s beginning to think that maybe they don’t belong to the same world. That they are simply orbiting in the same universe, two planets that were never meant to collide.

 

“ _I’m not mad._ _I just want to know why_ ,” she says. “ _I don’t understand why you’re lying to me_.”

 

“ _I’m not lying_ —“ he tries, but she cuts him off.

 

“ _Yes you are. I know you well enough to know when you’re lying to me_. _Is it a girl? Are you dating someone?”_

That’s the last thing he ever expected her to jump to. His eyebrows fly up on their own accord and he must look as surprised as he feels, because Jemma’s shoulders jerk with a bark of laughter and she shakes her head.

 

“ _Why do you look so surprised? You’re….well, quite well-formed and symmetrical. I’m sure that plenty of girls would be interested in you.”_

 

 _“Yeah, till they realize I can’t hear them_ ,” he signs bitterly. “ _From what I understand, communication is kind of a big deal in a relationship.”_

 

“ _Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t change the subject. Where have you been? Why are you avoiding me?”_

 

He wipes his clammy palms on his jeans and tries to think through the best way to explain himself.

 

“ _My mum sent me an email the other day_ —“

 

Jemma immediately straightens at that. “ _Oh no, is she okay? Do we need to make a trip home?”_

 

 _“Jemma!”_ he exclaims. “ _Stop it. Let me finish, would you?”_

 

_“Sorry.”_

_“It’s fine. Anyway, my mum send me an email and she said that she had seen this Facebook group for younger Deaf and HoH people. They were having a meetup, tonight, and I decided to go.”_

Jemma frowns. _“Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”_

_“Because you would have wanted to come,”_ he explains cautiously. _“And it’s not—it’s not really the kind of place that I can bring you.”_

She looks affronted at that. _“What, you can’t have multiple friends at once?”_

_“It’s not about that. You’re not—you aren’t like us.”_

_“I’m fluent in ASL,”_ Jemma argues. _“I would have no problem participating in conversation.”_

More bluntly than he’s ever spoken to her, he replies. _“And what if we don’t want you to?”_

She reels back, looking tragically wounded, and stands stiffly. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t attempt to sign anything, simply starts making her way toward the door. He moves faster than he normally does, his reflexes fast as he blocks her exit.

 

“ _Jemma, I’m sorry. Please, I’m so sorry_.”

 

He watches in abject horror as her eyes glass over with tears. She tries to reach past him to get to the door but he grabs her hand desperately. He stares at her for a long moment, hoping that the words he can’t speak or sign at the moment will somehow translate in his gaze.

 

Unbelievably, it seems to work. She wrenches herself from him rather violently, but walks back into his living room and stands near the window. She stares out of it, at the twinkling lights of the university just across the street, and finally turns around.

 

“When did we start having to apologize to each other so much?” she asks. He can’t find an answer, just stares back at her with a pained expression on his face. “I don’t remember us ever having to do this.”

 

“I am sorry, you know,” he tries. “I shouldn’t have lied to you and I shouldn’t have—I don’t know why I’m being so—mean.”

 

She watches him carefully. “ _I suppose you’re right, Fitz. I can’t really understand what it’s like to be you. I know how to sign but I don’t have to.”_

 

It’s one thing to know that, intellectually. It’s another to have Jemma confirm it.

 

“ _Yeah. You can’t. But that doesn’t mean you’re not my best friend in the world_.”

 

She smiles sadly and turns her face back toward the window. He hates when she does this. It forces him to wait for her to look at him, or for him to use his voice and she knows how much he hates that, even if he’ll at least do it with her. He won’t do it with anyone else, save his mother.

 

“Jemma,” he tries. She turns around instantly, the way she always does at the sound of his voice. He wonders how grating it is, how garbled and strange.

 

Once, in high school, he’d spoken on accident. He’d watched people’s faces, he had seen the looks in their eyes and he read lips enough to recognize that they were talking about him—making fun of him—until Jemma had stormed over and shoved a boy a foot taller than her into the lockers.

 

He couldn’t see her lips, couldn’t understand what she must have said with her tiny fists balled up in his shirt, but he recognized the look on the bully’s face. The offending kid was trying to look amused but deep down, he looked very afraid.

 

If there was one thing his Jemma could do, it was scare the crap out of anyone she so chose, which she didn’t do often. Perhaps that’s what makes her so very terrifying.

 

“ _Please don’t be mad_ ,” he finally says, relieved to be able to use his hands once more rather than his voice.

 

“ _I like your voice_ ,” Jemma tells him, not for the first time. “ _I wish you would use it more.”_

 

He decides to ignore this. It’s an argument they’ve had loads of times, because it doesn’t matter to him what she thinks of it. It matters to him what he thinks of it, and it’s something she’s never seemed to fully comprehend.

 

“ _Please don’t be mad_ ,” he repeats.

 

“ _I’m not mad, Fitz_.”

 

That might be what she’s saying, but it’s not how she looks. She looks unbalanced, a little devastated, some expression he can’t place and he could have sworn he knew all of her looks. Not for the first time, he wishes that he could more accurately read tone. Sure, he has facial expressions, and Jemma has always been fairly good at portraying intonation in her signing. It’s something not everyone is good at—especially those for which it’s a second language—but she’s better than most.

 

But this time, he can’t tell what it is.

 

“ _Can we please forget this_?” he pleads. “ _I just want to forget about it.”_

 

She nods wearily. _“Okay.”_

 

Every muscle seems to relax at once, and his fatigue finally settles into his bones. The last thing he wants to do is kick her out, though, not with all of the words that have been said and unsaid between them in the last few days.

 

To his surprise, she’s the one who brushes past him to leave. She wishes him a goodnight, gives him a sad little smile, and squeezes his hand. She slips out of his apartment, in a pair of mismatched socks and sloppy sweatpants, and he stares at the closed door for a long while after she leaves.

 

Finally, he falls into bed and tosses and turns until he falls into a fitful sleep. Upon waking, things still don’t feel quite right, but he has a text from Hunter.

 

**[Hunter:] good to meet you, mate. let’s go kick a football around some time.**

 

Sure, this whole thing is driving an undeniable wedge between him and Jemma, but he’s also gaining something really special here. Even the strange feeling in his chest can’t dampen that.

 

He fires off a response and gets ready for his day. To his surprise, Jemma is waiting for him in the lobby as usual, a bright smile on her face as though nothing has happened. She looks sharp, in her usual little collared shirt with a sweater over it.

 

She hands him a paper cup of tea and they head off to class together, no further words spoken on the issue.

 

He’s nearly euphoric. Maybe he can toe the line. Maybe his two worlds can exist at once.

 

When he looks at his phone after sliding in to his desk in Environmental Literature class, he finds another text from Hunter.

**[Hunter:] Better yet, this Saturday some of us are going to a captioned screening of the new Cap movie. You in?**

 

Despite his nerves at making new friends—an anxiety that he’s not sure will ever go away—he answers in the affirmative.


	4. Chapter Three

Things fall back into place for he and Jemma. She pointedly ignores his frequent texting, now that he’s been added to a group text with Mack, Elena, Joey, Hunter, Bobbi, and Daisy. She stays out of it, and even though a little shadow crosses over her face whenever he cuts her off to respond to a message, she lets it happen.

 

She’s happy for him, underneath all the jealousy, and he knows that. He encourages her to go to a party on Saturday at Antoine Triplett’s house, even though she’s always cautious to go anywhere without him.

 

If he’s going to make his own friends, she should too. It would make him feel a little less guilty. He’s incredibly pleased when she gives in to his needling.

 

He puts a little more effort into their time together, falling back into their routine of TV shows and homework and laying beside each other in the grass at the park. They go for walks, do some shopping, and just generally find themselves back into some semblance of the place where they began.

 

He dodges her desire to meet his new friends. He’s only hung out with them the one time. Maybe once he gets to know them better, he can bring her along. For now, he’s just not comfortable enough. He hopes she understands; he thinks she might.

 

“ _So what will you be doing this weekend?”_ Jemma asks cautiously over breakfast on Friday morning.

 

He chews slowly. _“I’m going to see the new Cap movie with the group.”_

 

That’s what they refer to Hunter and the rest of them as—simply The Group, a faceless, amorphous group of people.

 

Jemma’s face falls and she stares down at her plate for a long moment. He tries to piece together why, but he doesn’t have to wait long for an explanation.

 

 _“We always do that together,”_ she says. She doesn’t look angry or even upset, just completely resigned. It almost hurts a little worse.

 

 _“I’ll see it again with you,”_ he promises. She shrugs.

 

_“Yeah, okay.”_

 

 _“It’ll be just as good,”_ he tries. She flashes him a weak smile and grabs her book bag.

 

_“You’re right. I’m sure it will be.”_

 

 _“Where are you going?”_ he asks. _“Class doesn’t start for another hour.”_

 

 _“I’m going into the lab early_ ,” she evades. _“I’ve started my senior project, remember?”_

 

 _“Oh, right,”_ he recalls. _“Sorry. What’s your topic? You never said.”_

 

She tucks her hand behind one ear and hoists her bag further onto her shoulder. He’s been telling her for years that she should really be using a backpack, not her leather shoulder bag, but she’s always said that got above average fashion sense and that all of his backpack suggestions would undermine that.

 

 _“It’s still in the early stages,”_ she finally explains. _“I’ll tell you more about it once I have a clearer idea.”_

 

He frowns. Jemma has never waited for an idea to be clear before sharing it with him. Even though he doesn’t always understand her assignments or work—and even if they sometimes bore him to death to hear about—she always shares it. In fact, she always shares more than he would like.

 

He still hasn’t forgotten the cat liver next to his lunch. It’s something he’s sure will stay with him for the rest of his life.

                                                                                                    

 _“Tell me the unclear version then_ ,” he suggests. _“I’m sure I can follow.”_

 

She hesitates and then shakes her head. _“No, I think it’s best to wait. I’ll see you later, Fitz.”_

 

She dashes off without another word and he wonders if this is her way of getting back at him for lying about meeting up with the group. Maybe she’s punishing him for withholding the truth from her by withholding a truth of her own.

 

Fitz feels briefly enraged before reminding himself that Jemma isn’t usually that petty. She’s not one for revenge…at least not revenge on him.

 

His phone vibrates on the table and he picks it up, looking at the text from Daisy.

 

**[Daisy:] what are you up to tonight?**

Fitz chews on his lip. He and Jemma don’t have definite plans. They hardly ever do, though. There hasn’t been much of a reason to guarantee their respective spots on the other’s social calendar when they’ve spent most of their lives doing everything together.

 

**[Fitz:] Not sure. Why?**

 

**[Daisy:] I’m going out for drinks with Hunter and Bobbi at a bar near your school. Mack was coming but he bailed to take Elena out to dinner. Come with us so I’m not third wheeling.**

**[Fitz:] I have to ask Jemma first, we might have had plans.**

**[Daisy:] …have to ask Jemma? How do you “might have” plans with someone?**

Fitz rolls his eyes. Just as Jemma doesn’t quite seem to understand his new friendships, his new friends don’t always seem to understand is oldest one, his most treasured one.

**[Fitz:] First of all, that sentence is a mess. Second of all, we usually hang out on Friday nights.**

**[Daisy:] Just let her know that something came up. Pleeeease.**

He tells her that he’ll talk to Jemma and ends the conversation, heading off to class with an armful of paperback novels tucked under his arm. Three of them are for his classes, but the last one is just for his own enjoyment. Jemma always teases him, saying she can’t understand how he can possibly read for fun when he has to read so much for his education.

 

He’s never really explained to her how much fiction means to him. He’s never tried to tell her how opening a book is like coming home to a place where he is actually, finally and truly, understood.

 

He supposes that there are many things he’s never tried to explain to Jemma. He wonders if this would have happened to them no matter what, even if he could hear. He wonders if maybe they always would have struggled with hearing each other, if it’s just a part of who they are.

 

Shaking himself of the thought, he makes his way across campus for his lecture. He’s spent so many of the last several days trying to analyze everything about his friendship with Jemma and he’s starting to get exhausted by it. It had never been something he had to spend much energy puzzling through or picking apart. Their friendship had always just _been_.

 

He’s grateful for the distraction of his Great American Novels lecture. Today, they discuss Moby Dick. Antoine Triplett, the guy throwing the party Jemma will be going to on Saturday, eagerly participates in the discussion. His analysis of the book is deeper and more complicated than anything that Fitz had thought about while he had read it.

 

To be fair, he had been reading the book while fighting with Jemma. His focus tends to disappear altogether when he and Jemma aren’t speaking.

 

Fitz watches his translator rapidly sign to keep up with Antoine Triplett’s meandering thoughts and for some reason he finds himself broiling in anger.

 

Even though he doesn’t necessarily disagree with Trip, he finds himself speaking up anyway. He lets his translator do the actual speaking and when Antoine Triplett has apparently responded, it feels like a slap in the face.

 

_“Did you even read Moby Dick?”_

 

He sinks down in his seat after that and stares furtively at his paper. Being grumpy and withdrawn doesn’t just mean that he’s not engaged—it means that he’s missing everything. He can’t hear the remainder of the discussion and he refuses to even look up at his interpreter, who is definitely continuing to translate the classroom conversation despite his insistence that he won’t be participating anymore.

 

Maybe it’s his irrational jealousy over the perfectly formed, literature genius Antoine Triplett, who can hear Jemma’s laugh (and who frequently does make her laugh, when they run into him on campus). Maybe it’s feeling uneasy that now Jemma is the one keeping something from him. Maybe it’s his general sense of unbalance lately, his inability to pin down his sense of self.

 

But when he walks out of class, he finds himself texting Jemma.

 

**[Fitz:] Hey. Going out tonight with Daisy, I won’t be around.**

It takes ages to get a response, and whne he finally gets it, he’s not sure if he should be pleased or upset.

 

**[Jemma:] Okay! Have fun. Text me if you need a ride after.**

 

He grits his teeth. Clearly, she’s done being jealous of his new friendships. Maybe she had plans of her own tonight. She had seemed a bit particular when she asked what he was getting up to this weekend. Maybe she had been relieved to find that he was busy, so she could finally run off and live her own life, with the likes of Antoine bloody Triplett.

 

And offering him a ride like his mother? That was just a slap in the face.

 

Sure, he might be deaf, but he can find his way home after a beer or two.

 

Not for the first time, he feels stifled by the ways she tries to care for him. He shoves his phone into his backpack and doesn’t bother to respond again. It seems as though there may not be anything for him to say, anyhow.

 

***

 

The little light above his door flashes several times and Fitz frowns. Jemma hadn’t tried to further any kind of conversation and hadn’t been in their usual spot in the library that afternoon during their break between classes. He had assumed that she was once again cross with him.

 

He swings open the door and is surprised to find her there, bouncing eagerly on her toes with pink cheeks and shining eyes.

 

He’s momentarily struck with the fact that she’s incredibly beautiful. He lives in a kind of general numbness to her charms—after all, he’d watched her grow from gangly, awkward teenager to gorgeous adult. While it had been fairly difficult for him to adjust to in their teenage years, he’s now rather immune to her looks.

 

For the most part, that is. Every now and then he’s struck by the reality of what everyone else must be blinded by when they haven’t spent years looking at her face.

 

 _“It’s clear now,”_ she signs excitedly. He can tell she’s rushing, since she messes up the word ‘now.’

 

_“Your project?”_

 

She nods and hops up onto his counter, her legs swinging against the cabinets. _“It’s a way to make cochlear implants more effective.”_

 

He frowns. _“Cochlear implants like for—deaf people?”_

 

 _“Yes!”_ she exclaims. _“Not everyone who’s deaf is a candidate for implants, but with a few tweaks to the way that they interact with the actual biology of a person—it could eliminate deafness altogether!”_

 

His stomach rolls. He feels flushed and sick, and he stumbles to grab onto the counter to steady himself. He can feel Jemma worriedly staring at the side of his neck. He finally feels strong enough to use his hands and he tries his best to restrain his upset.

 

 _“You want to cure deaf people?”_ he asks incredulously.

 

_“Well when you put it that way—“_

 

 _“Oh right,”_ he interrupts. _“Not cure. Eliminate.”_

 

Jemma opens and closes her mouth several times, stricken. _“That isn’t what I meant. I didn’t mean to eliminate deaf people, I meant to eliminate deafness as a condition.”_

 

_“That’s the same thing!”_

 

 _“It isn’t!”_ Jemma huffs. _“Fitz, think of all of the times that you and I haven’t been able to communicate. All the ways that your life has been exceedingly more difficult than it ever needed to be. I could make all of that go away for you.”_

 

 _“I’m gonna throw up_ ,” he says. She looks near tears now.

 

_“Fitz, this is a good thing!”_

 

 _“Don’t tell me what it is,”_ he fires back. _“How long have you hated the most—the most fundamental thing about me?”_

 

 _“Your deafness isn’t the most fundamental thing about you,”_ she argues. _“You’re so much more than just deaf.”_

 

 _“Oh, well thanks,”_ he drawls sarcastically. _“Thanks so much for letting me know what the biggest part of my identity is. I’d be lost without you.”_

 

She swallows down a teary lump in her throat. _“This is all going wrong. This isn’t how I thought it would—“_

 

“You think I’m damaged!” he yells. He’s startled to find that he actually yelled it. The strain on his throat is uncomfortable and the way that Jemma flinches backward is even worse. He’s not sure if it’s from the volume or the sound of his garbled tone.

 

 _“That isn’t true,”_ she tries. _“I think you’re perfect.”_

 

_“Obviously you don’t. You wouldn’t be trying to cure me if that was the case.”_

 

 _“It’s not as though it would be mandatory!”_ Jemma attempts to explain. _“It would give people an option. It would be a choice, a better choice for people who don’t have that choice right now.”_

 

 _“Do you even hear yourself?”_ he asks angrily. _“You sound like some kind of—some kind of—“_

 

 _“Don’t you dare,”_ Jemma cuts him off. _“Don’t you dare compare to me to a eugenicist or something even worse than that, Fitz.”_

 

 _“I wasn’t going to,”_ he lies, but he was and they both know it. Tears swim in her eyes and he feels them burning in his. “ _Don’t do this project. Please.”_

 

 _“It isn’t about you,”_ she says. She curls in on herself but he refuses to pity her.

 

_“It clearly is. You never would have gotten this idea if you weren’t my best friend.”_

_“I really don’t mean anything by it,”_ Jemma pleads. _“I think you’re perfect just the way you are. I thought you would be happy that people might have another choice. That you could have another choice.”_

 

 _“This is the problem,”_ Fitz says. _“I might be the one who’s deaf but sometimes I think you don’t really hear me.”_

 

 _“I am trying so hard to hear you,”_ Jemma says.

 

 _“It doesn’t feel like it,”_ he replies. He scrubs at his face and looks at the clock. _“Look, Jemma, I have to go. I’m meeting Daisy downstairs in two minutes.”_

 

She nods sheepishly and stares at the ground. “I’m sorry, Fitz. I really need to know that you don’t think that I think that you’re somehow less than anyone else.”

 

He smiles humorlessly. “ _I don’t think that you think it. I think that you feel it. Your brain just hasn’t caught up to your heart yet.”_

_“Fitz…”_

 

 _“I have to go,”_ he says again. He grabs his favorite jacket off of the couch and shrugs it on, like it can protect him from this awful conversation. Jemma catches him by the hand as he tries to leave, and his eyes inexplicably linger on her lips, even though she’s not saying anything.

 

She lets go of him to sign.

 

_“Please tell me that it’s okay. That we’re okay.”_

 

He licks his lips and wrenches his eyes away from hers. _“Yeah, Jemma. We’re okay. As long as you drop this project.”_

 

 _“I only thought that I was helping_ ,” she attempts one last time. He shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself down.

 

_“Sometimes the ways you try to help just hurt, Jemma.”_

 

She looks like she wants to keep talking about this but he just _can’t._ It’s too hard and he doesn’t want to be late.

 

 _“I have to go,”_ he repeats for the third time. She looks desperate to keep him in his apartment.

 

 _“Is this a date?”_ she asks. “ _Between you and Daisy?”_

 

He looks at her like she’s grown a second head. _“What?”_

 

_“Are you going on a date? Is that why you’re so eager to leave?”_

 

He scoffs low in his throat. “ _No, it’s not a date. We’re going out with Bobbi and Hunter.”_

 

 _“Aren’t they a couple?”_ she pesters.

 

He cannot for the life of him figure out why any of this is important. Agitation takes over once more and he loses all patience with her. _“Yeah, they’re a couple. It doesn’t matter if this is a date or not, I don’t want to be late.”_

 

 _“It does matter if it’s a date,”_ Jemma pushes.

 

 _“It really doesn’t!”_ he exclaims.

 

 _“It does!”_ Jemma protests. _“Because I think that you should stay with me. We should talk this out. I feel like a lot of things have been said and I feel like we need to discuss them.”_

 

 _“There’s nothing to discuss, Jemma,”_ he says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

 

She grabs his hand again, waiting until he opens his eyes.

 

_“Maybe there is.”_

 

His jaw falls open. There’s something in her eyes that tells him this is serious, that it’s something really, really important. She’s looking at him desperately, almost—almost with some kind of want, but that can’t be right.

 

Maybe he will stay. Maybe they can fight all this out once and for all and things can finally go back to the way they’re meant to be.

 

A tap on his shoulder interrupts him. He whirls around to find Daisy standing there expectantly, hands shoved in the pockets of her leather jacket.

 

“You’re late,” she says, vocally. He almost doesn’t catch it on her lips. She looks past him at Jemma, making no obvious show of noticing the tear tracks on her face. “You must be Jemma. I’m Daisy.”

 

“Nice to meet you, Daisy. I’ll leave you to it.”

 

She doesn’t spare another word or glance at Fitz, just squeezes past them both and into the hallway to walk as quickly as possible back to her own apartment. Daisy digs her hands free.

 

_“Was I interrupting something?”_

 

 _“Maybe,”_ Fitz answers honestly. _“I—I don’t know.”_

 

 _“Tell me all about it on our way,”_ Daisy grins.

 

So he does, but he leaves out all the weirdness about Jemma thinking that his outing with Daisy is a date. He doesn’t want to make things awkward between them, not when he finally has a new friend that he feels comfortable sharing with. Daisy listens to him seriously, only cracking a couple of characteristic jokes.

_“Maybe you need some space,”_ she suggests. He immediately starts denying it, but she holds up her hand to stop him. “ _You guys have been practically attached at the hip since you were kids. Maybe taking some time apart of figure out who you are as grown ups isn’t such a bad idea.”_

 

 _“She was only trying to help,”_ he says defensively. He knows that Daisy had looked hurt when he explained Jemma’s plan to research a cure for deafness. He had been incredibly wounded himself, but he can’t let anyone think badly about Jemma, especially someone who doesn’t know enough about her.

 

_“I’m sure she was, but even if she’s well-meaning—she’s just never going to get it. No matter how much she wants the two of you to be the same. You’re just different, and that won’t change.”_

 

 _“Do you really think that?”_ he asks curiously. _“That we’ll just never really fit in, no matter what?”_

 

 _“Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,”_ she elaborates. “ _I think that being different can mean making a difference. But as you get older, there are going to be things—things like this—that you and Jemma won’t always see eye to eye on, and she won’t be able to understand your point of view.”_

 

He turns this over in his head, thinking of the expression on Jemma’s face when he’d yelled at her in his living room.

 

 _“I don’t think that’s true,_ ” he finally says. _“It sometimes takes her a while but she always understands me.”_

 

Daisy shrugs. _“Fine, but she looked like someone had just run over her dog when she left and you didn’t look much better. It just doesn’t seem like the two of you make each other very happy.”_

 

That’s a knife to his gut and he feels the need to wretch on the sidewalk. Him and Jemma, not making each other happy?

 

It all comes to him in flashes. Jumproping in gym class and giggling. Sneaking out to watch a meteor shower, wide smiles on their faces. Afternoon swims in a lake by their high school. Packing up all of their stuff for college and embarking on a life-changing roadtrip. Silly selfies and teasing and finishing each other’s thoughts.

 

No, he thinks. Daisy is wrong. She’s just never had anyone in her life like Jemma. It’s Daisy who can’t understand.

 

“ _I don’t mean to overstep_ ,” Daisy says cautiously.

 

Fitz shakes his head. _“No, no, it’s fine. I get it. I just don’t think anyone can get me and Jemma except for me and Jemma.”_

 

Daisy doesn’t say anything to that, and he can tell that she’s not convinced. They enter the bar and find Bobbi and Hunter sitting in a booth toward the back, his arm around her. Daisy and Fitz join them and he does his best to shake the unsettled feeling that he’s had ever since Jemma arrived at his apartment.

 

He checks his phone obsessively, hoping that she’s texted him to maybe meet up later tonight or for breakfast tomorrow. The screen remains blank, though, and he does his best to keep up with conversation with the people he’s currently with.

 

Despite his best efforts to be present, it’s clear that he’s miles away. Hunter drags him up to the bar to order the next bar and calls him on it.

 

_“What’s going on?”_

 

_“Oh, nothing. Just had a bit of a fight with Jemma.”_

 

 _“Ah, I get it. Girlfriend problems,”_ Hunter says with a sympathetic clap on the back. “ _God knows I can relate.”_

 

He glances over at Bobbi with a little smirk. He hasn’t known them for very long, but from his understanding in the group message, Hunter and Bobbi are notorious for their arguments.

 

 _“Jemma’s not my girlfriend,”_ Fitz corrects. “ _She’s just my best friend.”_

 

 _“And she has you this worked up?”_ Hunter asks doubtfully. _“Sounds like more than a best friend to me.”_

 

Fitz’s cheeks flush, partially from the two beers he’s already drank and partially from embarrassment. “It’s not like that with us.”

_“Not ever?”_ Hunter gapes at him. _“That doesn’t seem right.”_

 

And again, it might just be the beers, but he decides to tell Hunter something that he’s never told anyone before.

 

_“There were a couple times that I thought—maybe—that maybe we were more than that. But she’s never seen me that way.”_

_“Are you sure about that?”_ Hunter asks with a raised brow. _“She might.”_

 

 

Hunter grabs the next round of drinks, leaving Fitz reeling behind him as he leads the way back to the booth.

 

No. There’s no way.

 

There’s no way that Jemma is, or ever has been, interested in him that way. She likes guys like Antoine Triplett—sharp and good-looking and friendly and capable of hearing her. That’s what she likes.

 

Not scrawny, barely-taller-than-her, sloppy wanna-be deaf writers.

 

Although…she had been strangely jealous of Daisy in particular. He’d seen her face fall when she’d finally set eyes on Daisy. She had wanted him to stay—practically begged him to—and he hadn’t. He’d left.

 

Maybe there is, he thinks.

 

Maybe there is a chance she feels that way about him. He sits back down with his new friends and has to suppress a smile because _what if she does?_

The prospect isn’t something he’s ever really let himself think about. He raises his beer to his lips and finally settles into some semblance of comfort. He’s far more engaged in conversation now, much to the pleasant surprise of his friends.

 

He’s practically buzzing with excitement—and beer—when he finally says goodbye to them. He walks back home with a skip in his step because he’s going to Jemma’s. They’re going to finish their conversation and maybe even start a new one.

 

He arrives at her door and knocks eagerly, their secret little code. She does the same little pattern with the light in his apartment.

 

The longer he waits at the door, the more the crease between his eyebrows deepens. Jemma always answers her door. He checks the time—just past midnight—and supposes she may be asleep, although Jemma hardly ever falls asleep before one in the morning.

 

He finally heads back to his place. As soon as he walks in, he finds a bright piece of paper on the ground just inside near the door. He picks it up and reads it.

 

**Fitz—**

**I went home for a bit. I won’t do the project, don’t worry. Have fun with your friends this weekend.**

**\--Jemma**

 

He tosses the note on the counter and sighs. Maybe now isn’t the time for new conversations. Maybe it’s just time to finish the old ones.


	5. Chapter Four

The next morning, Fitz wakes up bright and early to the obnoxious vibrations of his alarm. He moans, slapping it off and forcing himself to roll into a seated position.

 

It’s 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday, and here he is—awake and about to take a drive in his beat-up Ford Explorer back to his hometown. Back to Jemma’s hometown, where she’s apparently gone to sulk.

 

Things are reaching a point between them that he isn’t comfortable with. Regardless of whether or not he thinks she’s the prettiest, smartest, sweetest, most frustrating woman in the world, she’s his best friend and he isn’t about to let that slip through his fingers just because he’s made some new friends and she’s made yet another misguided attempt at helping him.

 

He shuffles to the bathroom to brush his teeth and collect himself. He doesn’t drink all that often, and the bittersweet taste of beer on his tongue first thing in the morning is decidedly unpleasant. The vague haziness he’s feeling is unpleasant as well, but he pushes through and jumps in the shower hoping that it will wake him up.

 

It does, at least enough for him to throw on his clothes, make a cup of tea in a plastic Captain America tumbler that Jemma purchased for him for a birthday or Hanukah or maybe it was for no reason at all, because that’s just what she does. He has so many things from her that he can hardly remember the reason for her gift giving.

 

By the time he makes it to the car, he’s starting to get nervous. His fingers drum at the steering wheel as he sets off. At this time on a Saturday, the drive shouldn’t take more than an hour or so, but it’s still a long time to think. It’s a very long time, actually, and as the hour drags on he finds himself thinking about a lot of things.

 

The veracity with which Jemma had learned ASL to speak to him, just a little girl with two braids down her back.

 

The humiliation he felt when he started getting really good at reading lips and started noticing the way that people made fun of them both, but especially him.

 

The shame of Jemma fighting his battles that he couldn’t hear.

 

The goofy way she had asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance, with glow in the dark letters all over his bedroom. She had kept him out late on a school night just so they would have their desired affect. He had felt like she was asking him out of pity, despite her insistence that there was no one else in the world she would rather go with.

 

The way that she’s been lately—the way that she’s been torn up and upset at the prospect of being apart from him—makes him finally feel like perhaps she wasn’t just saying that to make him feel better. Maybe she really _does_ want to be around him all the time.

 

Of course last night with the group had been fun, but there were so many moments that he missed Jemma’s presence at his side. Little moments that he would have looked over at her, and they could have shared a secret smile over this or that inside joke. Years and years of friendship—well, not just friendship, he thinks.

 

Because friends don’t think about each other every second of every day. Now that he has more friends than just Jemma, he recognizes the difference. When he’s sitting in class, he doesn’t wonder what Hunter is up to. When he’s lying in bed, he doesn’t wonder if Bobbi is asleep yet. When he reads a particularly lovely sonnet for class, he doesn’t wonder what Daisy would think of it. He’s not curious about whether or not Mack would like a certain color shirt on him, or if YoYo prefers his cheeks scruffy or not.

 

There is something distinct and different about the way he views Jemma, and there’s no getting around that now. Now that he knows, he can’t stop picking it apart. He can’t stop his mind from wandering to all the steps that got them here, all the conversations they should have had but didn’t and the ones they shouldn’t have had but did.

 

He grits his teeth when he thinks of one of their worst fights, dwarfed only by recent events— _Milton_ , the jerk that Jemma had dated in high school. During those few short months when she had been running around with Milton, he had been sure that they would never be friends in the same way again. She spent too much time with him, always holding hands with him in public and kissing his cheek before class.

 

It had infuriated him. It had made him sick to his stomach.

 

Only now, years later, does he realize what that had been. He wasn’t angry with Jemma back then—he was angry that he wasn’t Milton. He had known in high school that he would always be a little bit jealous of the hearing people around him, the ones who could share their music with Jemma through an ear bud, who could listen to her giggle and hear her voice.

 

But with a startling jolt, he recognizes behind the wheel of his car that he had wanted to hold her hand. He had wanted to slip little notes to her in third period. He had wanted all of those things, but he’d been too thick to recognize it. Even if he had, Fitz is sure that he wouldn’t have done anything about it.

 

He’s sure of that because he doesn’t think he can do anything about it now.

 

Before he realizes it, he’s pulling up to the curb in front of Jemma’s house. As soon as his mother finds out that he’s in town, he’ll definitely have to pop over there, but right now, he has to make things right with Jemma.

 

Forget Milton. Forget her hair and her smile and everything else.

 

She’s his _best friend_. Even those words don’t go deep enough for what they’ve always had with each other. It doesn’t matter if he wants something else, something more, maybe. What matters is getting back to the basics, back to being FitzSimmons, as his mother had commonly referred to them as back in the day.

 

He steels himself and gets out of the car, walking to Jemma’s door with increasing butterflies in his stomach. He raises a hand to knock out his usual pattern before he remembers that this isn’t her apartment. They’re not at college.

 

This is Jemma’s childhood home, and if he’s going to do this he should be doing it right. With a little smile playing at his lips, he walks over the front lawn and around the side of Jemma’s one-story house. Her window is in the back corner, so he scales the little wall that isolates their backyard. He hops down and strides over to the large bay window of her bedroom. She has the curtains open, and the window, and for some reason it makes him want to cry.

 

She’d always done this in high school, on nights they wanted to meet up or sneak out or if he would text her that he couldn’t sleep. It’s always been his open invitation to climb through into her little world, no matter the time of day or night.

 

Even when he was an hour away at school, she had left the window open for him.

 

It’s not as easy as it was when he was fifteen or even eighteen. He’s filled out since then, gotten broader in the shoulders, and her window isn’t open quite big enough. Gracelessly, he tumbles through it and collapses on the soft pink rug beneath the window with a loud thud.

 

Jemma sits up, bedraggled and bleary-eyed. He watches her mouth form his name as her hands reach up to smooth down her hair. He smiles timidly and sits up, letting her take in the fact that he’s here.

 

 _“Hey,”_ he finally says.

 

She still looks shocked. _“Hi.”_

 

He just stares at her on the floor, trying to remember all of the things he had wanted to say to her in his car. Now that she’s sitting there in a little camisole, surrounded by her obscenely fluffy cream bedding that she’d always had, he doesn’t know what to say.

 

 _“Come sit,”_ she suggests, patting the foot of her bed. He stands immediately, sinking into the comfort of her mattress with his back against the corner wall.

 

 _“Who needs space?”_ he tries to joke. It works, because she smiles and stares down at the blankets before looking back at him.

 

 _“Why did you come?”_ she asks.

 

 _“Why did you leave the window open?”_ he retorts. He doesn’t mean it so defensively or so accusing, but it seems to come off that way. She flinches and he rushes to correct it. “ _I’m glad you did. I almost knocked on the front door, can you believe it?”_

 

He can see the breathy little laugh that gets and he relaxes. _“Don’t be absurd, Fitz, if you ever knock on that front door I’ll know for sure you’ve been body-snatched.”_

 

They settle into silence for a beat and he tries again.

 

_“I really don’t want space from you, Jemma.”_

 

_“I don’t, either.”_

_“Then how come you said you did?”_

 

Jemma swallows and looks up at the ceiling. She looks back down to respond. _“Every time I try to help or relate to you or make things better between us I just make it worse. I don’t want to keep making things worse.”_

 

She’s crying now. She doesn’t even try to brush the tears away. He swallows down some tears of his own. He doesn’t want to just let her off the hook for some of the things she said yesterday, but he can’t let her think that she’s ruined everything.

 

 _“Jemma, I know you would never try to hurt me,”_ he offers. _“I really do know that.”_

 

She doesn’t look convinced, but he presses on.

 

_“But you have to understand that being deaf is a huge part of who I am. For better or for worse, it’s been there. Every second of every day, my whole life. I don’t know how to be anything else and I don’t think I would want to be even if I was given the choice.”_

 

She chews on her lip, thinking through her next words to prevent any more misunderstandings. She’s quite tired of them, now. _“I didn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. Or that there’s anything wrong with any person who’s deaf. I just—I thought the option would be good for people. That I could help people, kids who wouldn’t have to go through what you did.”_

 

He remembers a very different conversation in this very room, years after becoming friends. They had sat on her floor late at night, telling secrets. He had finally spilled everything—all of the things the kids growing up had done to him, the reasons he had changed schools over and over and over again until he landed next to her.

 

The look on her face now is so similar to the look that she had then. Heartbroken but determined, a kind of chipped-away fierceness that tugs on his heartstrings at 22 years old the same way it did at 14.

 

 _“I get that,”_ he says. _“And you know what—it’s not my place to decide what all those kids would want. Just like it isn’t my place to try to dictate your senior project.”_

 

Her eyes widen. _“Fitz, I don’t want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable.”_

 

He shrugs awkwardly. _“Well as long as you’re not going to cure me against my will, then I have no problems with it.”_

 

She narrows her eyes at him, studying his every little expression. He sighs—he won’t be getting out of this one easily.

 

_“You had loads of problems with it yesterday.”_

 

 _“I was reacting emotionally,”_ he explains. “ _You caught me off guard. It felt like you were saying that—well, that I was useless or something. That you wanted a new version of me.”_

 

Her face crumbles again and he really, really wishes she would stop doing that. It just makes him want to forget the whole thing and hold her close, but burying all of these things is what got them here to begin with and he’ll be damned if they stay in this place for a day longer.

 

 _“I chose you,”_ she reminds him. She’s crying but she looks just as determined as he is to actually have this conversation out. _“Out of everyone in our entire town, I chose to make you my friend and I chose to learn a new language to be able to speak to you.”_

 

_“Yeah, which has always made me feel a bit like one of your competitive challenges.”_

 

This clearly wounds her but she shakes it off. _“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I just adore you, Fitz? Why can’t you believe that’s always been the case?”_

 

He’s temporarily stunned into silence. It’s rare that he doesn’t have some idea of what she’s going to say but for some reason, being told that she adores him feels incredibly…intimate, in a way that they normally aren’t. They don’t talk about what they mean to each other. It’s just not something they’ve ever done before.

 

 _“I don’t know,”_ he settles on. _“I really don’t.”_

 

Jemma smiles sadly. _“I’ve spent ten years trying to convince you how important you are to me. Nothing ever works.”_

 

He wonders if she knows that she’s just turned him into putty. He supposes that she doesn’t, because she’s never seemed to know the effect she has on him.

 

_“I’ll try to work on that.”_

 

 _“And I’ll try to work on being less…”_ she trails off, grimacing dramatically. _“…Patronizing.”_

 

He laughs and nods. _“That would be nice.”_

 

 _“I can’t believe you came all the way here,”_ she says, eyes glistening with awe and appreciation. He scratches behind one ear, cheeks heating up bashfully.

 

 _“I couldn’t let things stay that way,”_ he says. _“You’re too important to me.”_

 

She beams and before he can really prepare himself, she’s throwing herself into his chest. She nearly bangs her head on the wall, but her forehead settles rather forcefully on his chest instead. Jemma lies practically on top of him, still warm from her blankets and sleep. He relaxes into her, adjusting into a more comfortable position and wrapping his arms around her lower back. His face ends up burrowed in her hair, the familiar scent of vanilla coconut shampoo soothing his earlier fears and reigniting some of his observations from his drive.

 

He’s never really noticed what anyone else’s shampoo smells like. He’s never really been on the receiving end of much physical affection, but Daisy is a tactile person. Her constant little touches never have the same heart-racing affect on him as Jemma’s do.

 

She looks up at him and mouths her next words. _I’m sorry._

He smiles softly, kissing her forehead and extracting one of his hands to sign back to her. _“Me too.”_

 

 _“Since we’re already out here,”_ Jemma suggests when she sits up. He misses her weight immediately. _“Why don’t we do something fun? A bike ride, maybe? Or we could go walk around the shops like we used to.”_

 

Fitz grins. _“Let’s get breakfast at Vic’s and go from there.”_

 

She doesn’t respond, just bounces enthusiastically off of the bed and dashes for the messily packed duffle bag on her floor. Clearly she had decided to come here on an impulse. She pulls out a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved white top with lace that peeks out from the neckline. He’s always loved that shirt on her.

 

She strips out of her camisole and he immediately averts his eyes. He’s not fast enough to miss the peek at her lacy little bralette and he grabs a pillow nearby to hug on his lap, just for good measure.

 

He and Jemma have never really had boundaries. She had changed in front of him when they were younger and as they became teenagers, she didn’t seem to recognize that it might have a different affect on him than it did before.

 

 _Some biologist_ , he thinks derisively. When he looks back up, she’s hopping around in an effort to pull her skinny jeans up her legs and he snorts.

 

 _“Why don’t you just buy looser pants?”_ he teases, like he always does.

 

Jemma responds with a universally understood rude hand gesture, which just makes him laugh even harder. She’s giggling too, he can tell, and just as she’s buttoned her pants, her mother opens the door.

 

Mrs. Simmons doesn’t even look surprised to see Fitz on her daughter’s bed. _“Hello, Fitz.”_

 

 _“Good morning,”_ he responds. She shakes her head fondly at the two of them.

 

“I was going to ask what you wanted for breakfast but I’m sure you’re going to Vic’s?” Jemma’s mom asks her.

 

Mrs. Simmons is always sure to make her face visible to Fitz when she speaks. Her sign language is rudimentary—just the basics like hello and how are you, but she does her best to make sure Fitz can always understand what’s going on in the Simmons house. Jemma nods eagerly and goes to her vanity to put on her usual light makeup. Her mom wishes them a good day and leaves them alone again. When Jemma grabs her purse, she moves to the window instead of the door.

_“We usually take the door back out,”_ he reminds her.

 

She smirks cheekily. _“I know, but I missed your grand entrance. I want to see how you’re going to get out of here.”_

 

_“You’re cruel, Simmons.”_

 

She hopes out of the window with ease and he curses her for the fact that while she’s gotten a bit curvier in college, her general frame has remained the same. His landing in her backyard is the smallest bit more graceful than his entrance to her bedroom, mostly because Jemma eventually takes pity on him and offers her hands to help yank him through. She looks endlessly amused by the whole thing but he doesn’t hold it against her when she links her arm through his as they make their way to his car.

 

 _“Hey, where’s your car?”_ he asks when they clamber in.

 

 _“I took a cab,”_ Jemma explains.

 

He furrows his brow. _“All the way here? How come?”_

 

She licks her lips and turns to face the windshield. _“It doesn’t matter.”_

 

He almost lets it go but he just can’t. They can’t just keep letting things go. He taps her insistently on the arm until she looks at him.

 

_“It does matter.”_

 

 _“I was too upset to drive,”_ she admits. _“Happy now?”_

 

He shakes his head. _“Of course I’m not happy you were upset. But I’m happy you told me.”_

 

She reaches across to squeeze his arm and then nods toward the road. _“Let’s get going. I’m starved.”_

 

He rolls his eyes and starts the Explorer. They ride in comfortable silence, Jemma’s forehead leaning against the window as she watches their hometown roll by. Every now and then he glances over at her, taking in the way she fits there in the front seat like she always has.

 

He can hardly imagine anyone else riding shotgun.

 

He doesn’t want to.

 

Despite his best efforts, he can’t seem to shake the thoughts that have plagued him since Hunter’s comment last night about Jemma being more than just a best friend. He knows that no one makes him happier than she does, and that no one seems to be able to shake him up the way that she does when they fight.

 

She catches him staring and looks over with a fond smile. He returns it and reaches over on impulse to squeeze her leg. She stares down at his hand and he almost withdraws it, but then she covers it with her own before he can take it back.

 

His whole body feels warm and it takes a huge amount of energy to concentrate on the road. When they finally arrive at Vic’s, he thinks it’s a wonder that they managed to get there at all.

 

***

 

They have a wonderful day. They stroll through their little riverside town, walking down by the creek and getting mugs of hot tea to fight off the chill in the autumn air. Jemma, as eager as she had been to get to breakfast, had forgotten a jacket. He digs up one of his from the backseat of his car and insistently wraps it around her shoulders, which earns him a kiss on the cheek that feels like an espresso shot to the rest of his body.

 

They talk. Actually talk. They talk about the group, about all the ways that he’s been left out in life and all the things she’s been able to do but he just can’t. They talk about whether or not she should do her original senior project idea. They talk about how classes are going, about their parents, about his new friends and about how she should spend more time with the people in her lab group.

 

They talk about how he doesn’t want to go grad school, and how he feels like he’s letting her down if he doesn’t. She admits that she wants him to go just because she doesn’t want to be without him, even if it’s just for a few years. He makes her a promise that no matter where she goes to medical school, he’ll find a way to visit at least once a month.

 

She doesn’t seem to believe he can keep it, but he’s sure he will, because he’d do anything for her. He’d jump through a hole in the universe if it would bring him to where she was.

 

It feels so good to actually talk to her again. It’s been weeks since they had a genuine, good conversation. He hadn’t realized just how acutely he was missing it.

 

 _“You should come tonight,”_ he tells her as they sit beside the river, watching the water flow toward the lake.

_“To what?”_

 

 _“To the movies,”_ he says. _“Come meet everyone. It’s not as though you haven’t seen a captioned movie before.”_

 

She grins. _“Are you sure you want me to come?”_

 

 _“Of course I am,”_ he answers. _“Not everything has to be separate all the time.”_

 

Her whole face lights up. “I would love to, Fitz. I’m really excited to meet them.”

 

He picks up his phone to send a message to the group text, letting them all know about the extra person.

 

**[Fitz:] Hey guys. I headed home this morning to talk to Jemma. Things are good now. I asked her to come with us tonight, hope that’s cool.**

He slides his phone back into the pocket of his jacket and leans back on his elbows as Jemma decides that she’d rather be lying down. She’s always done this in the fall. Ever since he’s known her, Jemma has loved to look up at the sky through the branches of a tree when its leaves are reds and oranges and yellows.

 

She spins around to lay her head on his lap. He can only see her in profile, but she looks utterly at peace, relaxed and happy. His phone vibrates in his pocket and he has a quick conversation with the group about Jemma’s invitation.

 

**[Hunter:] Good with me. Excited to meet your lady friend ;)**

**[Bobbi:] Seconded!**

**[YoYo:] Will she be bothered by captions?**

**[Fitz:] No, not at all. She’s used to it. We go to the movies all the time.**

**[Daisy:] Didn’t you say she was going to a party?**

**[Fitz:] Nah, she wants to come with us instead.**

**[Daisy:] If she insists**

**[Fitz:] She doesn’t insist, I do. You guys will really like her.**

Daisy’s response has him a little on-edge, but he squashes the feeling and turns his attention back to watching Jemma. With his phone already out, he feels free to snap a few quick pictures of her. She catches him at it and mockingly drops her jaw.

 

 _“You? Taking pictures?”_ she asks incredulously. _“I see the luddite has decided to join the 21 st century.” _

 

He sits up to ruffle her hair and get a proper look at her face. _“You’re a real pain in the ass.”_

 

She shrugs happily and looks back up at the leaves. He’s pretty sure there’s no better way to spend a fall day than this, and knowing that he’ll be spending time tonight with his new friends and Jemma at the same time—well that’s just the cherry on top.

 

They head back to her house to gather her things and say a quick hello to her parents before they go say hi to his mum. That quickly turns into an hour-long ordeal complete with tea and biscuits, and when he finally negotiates their release, they have to head straight to the movies rather than stopping by school.

 

When they park, Jemma is clearly nervous. _“Are you sure this is okay?”_

 

 _“Yeah, it’s fine,”_ he assures her. _“They all said it was.”_

 

_“Because I can just head home if you would rather—“_

 

 _“Jemma,”_ he cuts her off. _“Really, it’s fine. I want you here.”_

 

She relaxes a little bit after that, but the entire walk to the lobby of the cinema, he can tell that she’s tense. Bobbi and Hunter are already near the popcorn stand and Bobbi waves them over eagerly. Jemma sucks in a deep breath and he grabs her hand to give it a reassuring squeeze.

 

She doesn’t let go of it as they walk over to his new friends. He doesn’t really mind.


	6. Chapter Five

They watch the film with little incident. Jemma hardly has time to really talk to anyone before it starts, and there’s not exactly a reason to be talking during the screening.

 

The movie is great and everyone eagerly discusses it on their way out. Bobbi goes out of her way to include Jemma in her and Hunter’s conversation toward the front of the pack, leaving Fitz to walk with Daisy, Mack, and YoYo.

 

 _“I can’t believe you’ve never told her not to do that,”_ Daisy observes, nodding toward Jemma. Fitz frowns.

 

_“What do you mean?”_

 

“ _Sim com,”_ Daisy responds. _“She’s leaning so heavily on spoken English that she doesn’t even realize she’s speaking broken sign.”_

 

He’s never thought about it, really, and he’s never really been a part of the Deaf community enough to be in discussions about it. His mother never moves her mouth when she signs, and her ASL has always been perfect. But Jemma…Jemma’s is often broken and awkward, not-quite-right.

 

Fitz never questioned why that was. He tended to think it was just because she learned in a rushed way. He had found her mouthing cute for a long time, but now that Daisy has pointed it out, he sees her point. Spoken English is Jemma’s first language, and she’s leaning on it so heavily—prioritizing it, almost, to the point where her sign and her communications with other people who use it are put in the back seat.

 

_“Oh. Well…shit.”_

 

Daisy laughs and claps him on the shoulder. _“I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, Fitz. If she’s going to be around, she needs to learn the rules.”_

 

 _“Even I don’t know that many of the rules,”_ he grimaces. Daisy smiles and nods.

 

_“I know you don’t. But that’s the whole point of the group, Fitz. It’s so we can all figure it out together, in our own way. If she’s going to tag along sometimes, then she has to participate in that too.”_

 

 _“I’ll talk to her about it,”_ Fitz offers. _“I’m sure she doesn’t mean anything by it, honestly—“_

 

 _“She probably doesn’t,”_ Daisy agrees. It surprises him to see her not assume the worst in Jemma, and Daisy seems to read that on his face. _“I know I’m hard on her. I’m hard on a lot of people but that’s just what happens when everyone, your whole life, has been so hard on you for not being able to hear them. And then when someone comes into my world and doesn’t understand that rules or what they’re doing—it makes me mad. Not even…not even mad. Just upset.”_

 

Mack joins in on the conversation. _“Daisy has a point. We all do stuff that isn’t perfect and a lot of us have had a lot of time to learn about ableism and all of these kind of…academic and advocacy concepts. Some of us haven’t.”_

 

 _“And don’t even get me started on the Spanish thing,”_ YoYo chimes in with a pointed roll of her eyes at Mack. Mack throws an arm around her in response.

 

_“Which I’m trying to get better at.”_

 

 _“I really will talk to her,”_ Fitz repeats. Daisy shakes her head.

 

_“I think I should.”_

 

His eyes widen and he immediately protests. _“I don’t think that’s a great idea.”_

 

 _“I’m not going to bite,”_ Daisy assures him. _“The two of you have been having it out enough lately, okay? Maybe she’ll take it better coming from me. I’m willing to give her the tools to figure this out, but she has to do the learning on her own. It’s not your job or anyone else’s to teach her everything.”_

 

She’s right. He knows that. He had gotten so swept up in his friendship with Jemma as a child that he’d never really participated in any kind of group activities or community building with other Deaf or HoH people. There are a lot of things that he doesn’t even understand about his own community, but they’re also things that he feels in himself—he’s just never been able to articulate them.

 

Jemma’s sim com had always annoyed him, despite the ways he found it kind of cute. He had attributed the annoyance to an unwillingness to find his best friend adorable in any way, but the more he examines it, the more he understands. He’s been frustrated by it because she’s prioritizing her spoken language over ASL, that she’s not really participating fully in their conversations.

 

He feels himself growing more agitated and upset the more he thinks it through. _“I think you’re right. I think if I tell her, it’s just going to turn into a big fight.”_

 

Daisy gives him a supportive grin and nods _. “I agree. I promise I won’t be rude or anything. It’s just something she needs to know.”_

 

Before Fitz can ask her anything more about it, Daisy has skipped up toward the front and linked her arm with Jemma’s. She tugs her up ahead, even further than Hunter and Bobbi. Jemma looks over her shoulder at Fitz with an excited but nervous expression.

 

He gives her a thumbs up and a wink in response, still wrestling with his own feelings on the issue.

 

He can’t see the conversation in it’s entirety, but he most definitely notices when Daisy gets to her point, because Jemma stops in her tracks. By the time the rest of the group has caught up, Jemma and Daisy remain at a standstill. Daisy waves everyone else forward and it takes everything in Fitz not to stay behind and try to somehow—smooth things over? Protect Jemma?

 

What is he trying to protect her from? The realities of his life? The truth in her behaviors?

 

He’s not even sure, but he knows he needs to stop. If he’s ever going to really come to terms with being Deaf—and he’s not sure he ever has—then he has to draw these boundaries with her, these lines. And if that means enlisting the help of other people to do it, then that’s what has to happen.

 

He wants to let her in to every aspect of his life, but he can’t do that if she’s stepping on people’s toes and engaging in actions that offend or hurt him and the others. It just isn’t going to work.

 

And he wants it to work. God, does he want it to work. In his ideal world, he has his life with Jemma—their usual life that they’ve lived for a decade, but he also has a life with people that he can talk to on a different level. Who can understand how frustrating it is to deal with a bad interpreter in a class, who can understand the annoyance of growing up going to school dances where you can’t hear the music. He wants to be able to sit down and discuss the annoyances, the hurtful things, the hard things with people who can truly understand them.

 

He likes the idea of Jemma coming along sometimes. He doesn’t want to have to live two completely separate lives, but he also wants to be able to do things without her, to have his own life that isn’t completely reliant on her.

 

He arrives at Phil’s with Mack, YoYo, Bobbi, and Hunter about ten minutes before Daisy and Jemma finally walk in through the door. He orders her a hot tea and a plate of fries for them to share while he anxiously waits for them to arrive. Jemma’s lips are pursed tightly and his stomach drops to the ground.

 

This is going to be yet another thing between them. Just when he feels like they’ve made it to common ground, it’s all going to go to hell again.

 

She smiles at him a bit tightly. Her eyes look a little red but she sits next to him comfortably in the booth and greets him like everything is fine.

 

But her lips don’t move while her hands do and his eyebrows fly up to his hairline on their own accord.

 

Jemma doesn’t acknowledge it and neither does he. It obviously takes her a huge amount of effort not to move her mouth while she’s talking to everyone throughout the night, and she slips up a few times. Overall, though, her sign is much better and everyone around him seems far more at ease with her.

 

To his surprise, Jemma and Daisy spend a lot of the time talking to each other. The coldness they’ve both displayed toward one another seems to melt away the more time that they spend together.

 

Maybe it was just not knowing each other, never having met, never having a person to put to the name.

 

Regardless of the reason, he’s glad that they’ve reached some kind of truce between them. He talks to Hunter and Mack about video games and doesn’t really worry about whatever Jemma is talking to Bobbi, Daisy, and YoYo about.

 

He doesn’t realize how much time they’ve spent talking and eating and just hanging out until Phil kicks them out so he can close up. He says goodbye to everyone and Jemma looks just as surprised as he is when Daisy pulls her into a hug on the sidewalk. Bobbi smiles fondly off to the side, giving Fitz an approving nod.

 

He walks back to the theater with Jemma to get his car. They don’t really say much until they get back to their apartment building. She follows him to his place without any discussion of whether or not she’ll go back to her place, just like always. He’s glad that whatever conversation was had between Jemma and everyone else, she’s clearly not going to let it send her running away again.

 

She curls up into the corner of his couch and he grabs them both some water, bringing it over and sitting on the other side of her. She throws a blanket over both of them and fiddles with her water before finally saying something.

 

“ _I had no idea what I was doing,”_ she tells him. Again, her mouth doesn’t move. Her sign is slower but far more clear. _“I didn’t know, but…I should have. I should have known and I’m really sorry.”_

 

He reaches over to rub her shoulder. _“It’s okay.”_

 

 _“No, it isn’t,”_ she insists. _“I’ve been so focused on treating you like you aren’t different and I never bothered to figure out what it’s like on your end. I learned the language without ever trying to learn about the culture. It’s like—in Spanish class or any language, you learn about the culture. It’s part of the requirement. But I skipped all of that and it’s not okay.”_

_“To be fair, I skipped a lot of that too,”_ he offers sheepishly. Her level of self-awareness isn’t something he’s used to and it feels a little uncomfortable.

 

She cringes. _“And a lot of that was probably because of me.”_

 

He wants to deny it, but he can’t, not really. He isn’t sure why he hasn’t been involved in his own community for most of his life. That’s something he’ll have to examine on his own, maybe with his mum.

 

 _“Thank you for letting me come tonight,”_ she tells him. _“I’m really glad that I did. They’re all really great people and if I hadn’t come, Daisy never would have set me straight.”_

 

_“I’m glad it didn’t upset you too much.”_

 

_“It upset me but only because I didn’t realize I was doing something that was so wrong and so offensive. But now I know and I’m going to fix it,” she continues. “I’m really glad that I came tonight but I also—I think it’s important that you go to most of these things on your own.”_

 

He frowns. _“Jemma—“_

 

 _“This isn’t a fight,”_ she says. _“I’m not angry at your or upset or jealous or anything. Not anymore. But you’re right, you skipped a lot of these things and me coming with you limits what you can talk about. I don’t want to be that person.”_

 

He’s never loved her more than he does in this moment. He’s known her since they were twelve and this is one of the only times he’s ever seen her be so open about her own flaws and limits. Jemma has always been trying to take on the whole world, to be the best at everything. To see her admit that she can’t be the best at this and that there’s something he needs to do that she just can’t be a part of touches him deeply.

 

She leans forward and kisses his cheek—the second time in one day, and he kind of can’t believe that he’s keeping track.

 

 _“You’re taking all of this really well,”_ he tells her. She smiles nervously and tucks her hair behind her ears.

 

_“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking in these past couple of weeks. I’m really trying.”_

 

 _“It means a lot to me,”_ he admits. He feels suddenly shy, like he’s twelve again and she’s introducing herself in the school cafeteria. _“This is important to me and I don’t want anything to change between us because of it.”_

 

She tilts her head to the side. _“It’s a bit late for that.”_

 

He swallows hard. _“I hate change.”_

 

 _“I know you do,”_ she says fondly. _“But sometimes things need to change.”_

 

 _“We’re okay though, right?”_ he asks. _“You aren’t going to disappear again or run back home or anything?”_

 

She shakes her head. “ _No, I won’t. I’m still here.”_

 

 _“I can’t believe I never even noticed,”_ he muses.

 

 _“The thing I was doing?”_ she asks.

 

 _“Yeah, that,”_ he confirms.

 

 _“There’s probably a lot of stuff that I do wrong,”_ she says. _“Just…promise not to let me get away with it.”_

 

He frowns. _“What?”_

 

_“Don’t let me get away with these things just because we’ve been friends for so long or because it’s something that you or I didn’t know about before. It isn’t an excuse for me.”_

 

She’s just as determined now as she had been to learn sign language to begin with. He holds out his hand to pinky promise her. She wraps her pinky around his with a smile.

 

 _“Promise,”_ he assures her.

 

He tentatively scoots closer to her, putting his arm around the back of the couch behind her. He feels her breath change for a moment and then she shifts to lean into him. His fingers fiddle with the ends of her hair and he can _feel_ her thinking.

 

For today, they’ve done enough talking, he thinks. They have a lot to process, both of them. Fitz has to figure out where he fits into the world he moves around in as well as how he fits into the Deaf community. Jemma has to figure out how she’s going to be there for him and a part of his life without talking over people who actually belong in his other world.

 

It’s not simple. It’s not easy. There’s no instruction manual or guidebook for this.

 

For the first time in a while, though, Fitz has real, heart-squeezing faith in them and in what they can accomplish together.

 

She’s willing to bring down her walls. She’s willing to be wrong and to learn how to do things right. This night could have gone a hundred different ways, and he had expected Jemma to take offense at Daisy’s confrontation. Instead, she had surprised him, the same way she’s been surprising him time and time again for a long time.

 

It’s a start. It’s the most important part of it, really, and his eyes start to feel heavy with his cheek on her head.

 

They fall asleep on his couch. He wakes in the middle of the night, his neck in unbelievable pain. With a low groan, he sleepily moves them both to a more comfortable position lying down with an actual pillow beneath their heads.

 

Jemma stirs for a moment, her grumbles vibrating in her chest as she curls up against his side and throws a leg over him.

 

He’s out again in moments.

 

***

 

Jemma spends the next several days almost constantly in the lab. He hardly sees her, but he receives plenty of texts from her in some kind of reassurance that she isn’t angry or hiding. She’s simply busy, and that gives him time to be busy himself.

 

He spends a lot of time massaging the book he’s writing, trying to bring out the themes of isolation and desire for inclusion. He reads—a lot—and does a lot of research on Deaf culture. It feels odd, to read up on a group of people that he belongs to.

 

He spends time with the group. He gets pizza with Mack and they talk about cars and games and even having a crush on a girl whose first language is different than yours. He grabs a beer with Hunter for happy hour and they have a chat about different perspectives on things like hearing aids, cochlear implants, speech therapy, and all kinds of issues surrounding Deafness and being HoH. Hunter has a surprising amount of perspective for someone who spends so much time joking around and goofing off.

 

Daisy’s perspective is very different from Hunter’s. That’s what he learns when he and Daisy go for a walk through the park after his classes one day.

 

 _“I don’t think we should have to do all of these things to fit in to the world,”_ Daisy explains to him. _“People like Hunter are fine with options that will basically fix it all, but I don’t want to be fixed or cured. I want the world to accept me. I want the world to be more accessible to me without me having to be more accessible to the world. If that makes any sense.”_

 

It does make sense. It makes a lot of sense, actually, and he’s not sure where he falls on the spectrum of the arguments presented to him by both Hunter and Daisy.

 

 _“I don’t really know what I think,”_ Fitz admits. Daisy smiles brightly.

 

_“Good. Take your time with it. You don’t have to agree with me or Hunter or any of us. What’s important is that you do the work on your own and figure out how you feel about it.”_

 

 _“You say that now,”_ he teases. _“Until I pick the other side.”_

 

She rolls her eyes. _“Look, I have strong convictions. Mostly concerning why you choose to drink gross leaf water instead of coffee.”_

 

The conversation shifts into bickering over the relative merits of tea versus coffee, and he’s relieved to find that he can enjoy conversations with other Deaf people that aren’t just about being Deaf. His time with the group doesn’t just have to be about their common experiences—it can be about all of the ways that they’re different, too, and the different things that they’re interested in.

 

It’s a relief, to feel like his world doesn’t have to be so completely black and white.

 

 _“Hey,”_ he asks Daisy as they say goodbye near campus. _“Would you maybe want to read a couple chapters of the book I’m writing? I think you would have a good outlook on it.”_

 

She looks pleasantly surprised by his offer. “ _Yeah, of course. That would be really cool actually.”_

 

He relaxes. _“Great. I’ll email them to you later.”_

 

_“Looking forward to it.”_

 

She gives him a little wave and heads off down the street. He watches her go, a small figure in a black leather jacket, hands stuffed in the pockets. He knows enough of her story to know how she started—completely alone, bounced around and constantly told that she wasn’t enough.

 

He can’t imagine what that kind of loneliness must have been like as a child. He had experience his fair share of it, sure, but he’d always had his mother and then later, Jemma. If anyone can give him feedback about his book and the themes of it, it’ll be Daisy.

 

He watches her go for a long time and then heads back home to sit down and write. The more he thinks about her experience and the experiences he had heard about from Hunter and from Mack, the more his dystopian novel morphs into a real world, full of very real people.

 

It’s like his internal life has woken up. He has something important to say. Writing this book isn’t just his escape now; it’s a message, an aim, a goal. It’s for all of the people like Daisy and like him. Like Bobbi and like Hunter and like YoYo and Mack. It’s about all of them, about all of the ways they’ve tried to fit a square peg into a round hole and then been criticized for trying.

 

He stays up late into the night writing and when he finally feels like he has something good, he sends it off to Daisy. She’s the first person he’s showed it to—even Jemma hasn’t seen it yet, and he feels guilty about that for a second before shaking it off.

 

This isn’t about her. It’s about him. It’s about all of them, and that’s more than okay. It’s _good._

 

Fitz spends days and days holed up in his room writing when he isn’t in class. During the evenings, people pop over to eat takeout with him. He and Daisy argue about some of the lines he sent her over Chinese food. Bobbi and Hunter come over with a really delicious mushroom soup that Hunter apparently made. YoYo and Mack drag Daisy back with them for Taco Tuesday.

 

He’s busier than he’s ever been, surrounded by more friends, books, and words than he’s ever had. That’s why it takes him so long to figure out that he hasn’t actually seen Jemma in about nine days.

 

It’s Daisy who brings it up as the group sits in their usual booth at Phil’s on a Thursday night.

 

 _“Where’s Jemma been?”_ she asks. “ _It’s been a while since you brought her up. I figured she’d be over here at least sometimes.”_

 

He goes cold. _“I haven’t seen her in a while.”_

 

Daisy looks concerned. _“Is this because of what I said to her? She seemed fine. We had a good talk—“_

_“No, it’s not that,”_ he reassures her _. “That was actually really good for her. It was really good for both of us. I think she’s been in the lab a lot. We’ve texted but I haven’t actually seen her in a while.”_

 

Bobbi looks a little stiff. Daisy had told them about Jemma’s proposed project and it’s been a bit of an awkward point between Fitz and the rest of them. _“The lab? So she’s working on her project?”_

 

 _“I have no idea actually. I asked her about it and she said she would tell me more when she had a better plan, whatever that means,”_ Fitz explains.

 

 _“Maybe you should stop by her place after this,”_ Hunter suggests. “ _You know, just see what’s up.”_

_“You really want me and Jemma to be a thing, don’t you?”_ Fitz points out. Hunter grins easily and leans back.

 

_“Hell yeah I do. I’ve only met the girl once and it’s agony watching you two dance around each other.”_

_“Even I thought about smashing your faces together like dolls,”_ Daisy teases.

 

Fitz runs a hand through his hair. _“It’s more complicated than that, guys. We’ve been friends forever. I can’t lose her because I have feelings for her.”_

 

 _“Jemma loves you,”_ YoYo says. _“I don’t know how she loves you.”_

 

 _“She means in what way,”_ Mack contributes before there can be a misunderstanding. YoYo nods in confirmation and continues.

 

_“But I don’t think it will matter if you tell her. I think she will be happy to know.”_

 

 _“The moment has to be right,”_ he dodges.

 

 _“Hunter told me he liked me when we were searching in the trash for one of his aids that he had somehow lost,_ ” Bobbi chimes in. _“I’m just saying, even the weirdest moments can be sweet.”_

 

 _“It wasn’t weird!”_ Hunter protests.

 

Everyone echoes some variation of _“yes it was”_ and he sulks in the corner for a couple of minutes.

 

Fitz begs them all to drop the Jemma thing and eventually they do. He’s done a lot of thinking about Jemma lately. Not just his feelings about her, which he now openly admits both to himself and to his friends are decidedly romantic. He's also thought deeply about her project and it does make him uncomfortable, still. It isn’t her place to be making these kinds of decisions. The more he’s learned about these things, the more he recognizes that she’s looking at this from a really simple lens that just doesn’t exist for people who are actually Deaf or HoH. He doesn't even know how he feels about a "cure" as a concept. He has a lot of soul searching to do himself, but he does know one thing for sure--he isn't comfortable with the idea of a hearing person making this kind of call. 

 

It feels too late to tell her that now, especially if she’s spent all of this time throwing herself into this project. He promised that he would tell her these things, though, so he steels himself on his way back to their building.

 

He’s going to explain it to her, even if it’s too late to change anything.


	7. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has stuck by this fic, and me as I've written it. 
> 
> The subject matter is complicated and difficult to navigate. I have learned so much while writing this fic, including from my readers who took time to educate me on issues that I hadn't found on my own. It's been a huge growing experience for me, and hopefully a growing experience for some of you as well. 
> 
> I know some people have been unhappy with Fitz or Jemma or both in this fic. I urge you to think it through and consider all sides. Perhaps it's my fault for not delving deeper into this fic--I know I could have written a 100k fic with this, but time was just not permitting. I'm still glad that I undertook this, though, and I hope that it has inspired people to think a little more deeply about inclusion, education, and representation. 
> 
> I did my best to tackle this as fairly as possible for both Jemma and Fitz's characters, but this story was always meant to belong to Fitz. It's why the perspective has largely been limited to his point of view. 
> 
> Anyway, I really do hope that people ultimately enjoy this ending. Thank you for the support, the nudging, the corrections, and the education. I've appreciated all of it.

When Fitz makes it to Jemma’s, he’s grown increasingly anxious about the entire thing—his feelings for her, the complicated nature of this project she’s working on, the sudden realization that he’s gone nine entire days without seeing his best friend. He knocks wildly on her apartment door with little regard for the neighbors.

 

It takes longer than usual for her to come to the door, and he realizes after the fact that it must be because he didn’t do their little morse-code-like pattern.

 

She swings it open and looks surprised, but pleased, to see him. Her hair is piled on top of her head, her eyes show a serious lack of sleep, and there’s a mess all over her apartment.

 

Her apartment is never messy. It’s always intolerably clean, and he immediately feels worry bubbling in his gut.

 

 _“Hi there,”_ she greets with a smile. _“It’s nice to see you.”_

 

 _“It’s been a while,”_ he says carefully.

 

 _“Nine days,”_ she specifies with a fond roll of her eyes. “ _I meant to stop by the other day, but I saw Hunter and Bobbi going into your place and didn’t want to intrude.”_

 

 _“You wouldn’t have been intruding,”_ he protests. _“I was just working on writing all week and they were trying to make sure I didn’t become a hermit.”_

 

Jemma laughs and shakes her head. _“I’ve been a bit of a hermit myself, actually. I haven’t been out much, other than going to the lab.”_

 

He finally gets a good look around her living room as he steps further in. There are papers everywhere—tacked on the walls and on every surface.

 

She’s gotten in too deep. There’s no way she can back out of her research now and it makes him feel a little bit sick. He’s still determined to tell her how it makes him feel though.

_“Deep into your senior project?”_ he asks tentatively.

 

She fails at fighting the massive smile spreading across her face. It only makes him feel worse. It’s a wretched feeling, to look at a person you love and who you know loves you, and feel completely out of your element. To feel completely on a different plane of existence.

 

 _“I want to show you something,”_ she tells him enthusiastically before dragging him toward the wall. He shuts his eyes against it after she’s parked him. He doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to know her plans for fixing him and people like him. It hurts too much.

 

She insistently tugs on him, eventually moving her body directly in front of his. He can feel her, warm and inquisitive, behind his closed eyes. She tugs on his collar and he finally opens them, staring resolutely into her face to avoid what’s behind her.

 

_“What’s wrong?”_

 

 _“I don’t know if I can do this,”_ he replies. _“I can’t be a part of it, Jemma. Your intentions might be good but it’s not just about that. There are so many other things that you have to think about and it feels like you haven’t thought about them.”_

 

She tries to cut him off but he grabs her hands to silence her. He continues on and she lets him.

 

_“I’ve done a lot of thinking about this. I know I said I was okay with it but I was stuck. I was stuck feeling like you and I couldn’t be the same anymore, and just wanting things to go back to how they were. But maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe there were a lot of things that were wrong with us before and I want to fix them, but we can’t. We can’t fix them if I feel like I can’t talk to you about this stuff.”_

 

Jemma looks like she’s about to explode, but not in the way that he expected her to look. She’s eager, practically bouncing on her toes, and he can’t imagine why the hell his pain is making her so positively joyful. Sure, he’s seen her gleefully cut into a frog (which had seemed awfully sadistic in middle school), but he’s never known her to take pleasure in anyone’s unhappiness—especially his own.

 

 _“Fitz,”_ she interrupts. _“Please, just let me show you.”_

 

He thinks about telling her no. He thinks about just leaving, and figuring out the rest of this mess later, because that would be easy. He considers just holing himself up in his room and writing until the sky is pink, but he can’t do it.

 

The same way that being Deaf is an inextricable part of his being, so is Jemma. He can’t get her out of his bones. The only way out of this is through, so he finally looks past her to look at the papers on the walls.

 

Front and center is a poster of some kind with a proposed thesis.

 

**_ALTERNAIVE NON-STEROIDAL TREATMENT FOR AUTOIMMUNITY_ **

****

He steps closer to look in closer detail at all of the research taped up in her apartment. His throat tightens with emotion as he begins to put the pieces together.

 

Jemma has been so wrapped up in her own little world because she’s trying to make sure she doesn’t trample all of over his. She changed her project.

 

 _“How long did this take you?”_ he asks her when he manages to tear his eyes away from her work.

 

 _“So long,”_ she grins. _“Nine of the longest days of my life, actually.”_

 

_“How did you—didn’t they say once you picked something, you couldn’t switch?”_

 

Jemma nods. _“They said that, but I’m incredibly persistent when I want to be.”_

 

She’s not kidding. She always has been, ever since she was a little girl with braids down her back, spending hours every day learning sign.

 

 _“Why did you do it?”_ he asks. His heart is in his throat and he’s sure that even if he had any desire to use his voice right now, he wouldn’t be able to.

 

 _“Daisy didn’t tell you?”_ Jemma asks curiously. His head tilts to the side on its own accord.

 

_“No. Tell me what?”_

 

Jemma smiles softly. _“She’s actually the only person I’ve seen in nine days.”_

 

She holds up a finger for him to wait and then digs through a pile of books on her couch. She emerges with two thick paperbacks and holds them out to him. He examines the covers and is shocked to find that they’re books about being Deaf, written by Deaf people.

 

 _“I started doing my research after we all went to the movies,”_ Jemma explains _. “And once I was done reading, I still had a lot of questions.”_

 

 _“Of course you did,”_ Fitz grins. His pulse is wild. He’s elated, practically floating. All he wants to do is grab onto her but he also wants to hear what her and Daisy have been up to. The desire to know eventually wins out.

 

 _“Naturally,”_ she agrees with a smirk. _“So I found her on Facebook and asked if she would be willing to meet up with me and answer some questions I had.”_

 

 _“You could have asked me,”_ Fitz says, a bit wounded. He’s been desperately trying to communicate more openly with her, and the fact that she chose a stranger to talk to about this feels a little bit insulting.

 

 _“You’re not as honest with me,”_ she fires back. _“You don’t want to hurt my feelings. I appreciate that, but I needed someone who would tell me the truth, even if it stung.”_

 

_“I can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”_

 

 _“I didn’t ask her to keep it a secret,”_ Jemma defends pre-emptively. _“I would never ask your friends to keep anything from you.”_

 

He’ll have to have a conversation with Daisy about this, later, but for now he needs to know more.

 

_“What did she say?”_

 

 _“We talked a lot about autonomy and choice and audism,”_ Jemma explains. He marvels at the fact that her lips aren’t moving at all. “ _I honestly haven’t really made up my mind yet on a lot of things, but I know I need to do a better job at listening to people who know what it’s actually like. I’m just a student. I haven’t taken medical ethics or even gotten close to learning the history of all of this. I’m not equipped to handle this kind of project, so I’m not going to. Not until I have all of the right information and that may never happen. And Daisy helped me start phasing out my sim com. We don’t agree on everything, but I quite like her actually.”_

 

He can’t believe this. That Jemma and Daisy have been hanging around together, working through Jemma’s behaviors.

 

_“I’m…really surprised.”_

 

 _“I know I haven’t been around,”_ Jemma winces apologetically. _“But you seemed to be doing just fine without me.”_

 

He’s not sure if she means it the way that it comes off, but he thinks now might be his moment. He’s flying high from the revelation that Jemma has been doing all of this work to be a better friend and a better ally to him and his friends. She’s spent all of this time and effort to make him comfortable and to make sure she’s not crossing any lines she can’t come back from.

 

It means everything to him, just like she does.

 

 _“I wasn’t doing just fine without you,”_ he disagrees. _“It took me a while to notice how long it had been.”_

 

Something crosses over her face and he feels immediately guilty for the admission.

 

 _“I think it’s because we were still texting a lot,”_ he says. _“Whatever it was, I missed you, Jemma. I really did. I could never be just fine without you.”_

 

She smiles sadly, not looking completely convinced but clearly doing her best to try. _“I understand, Fitz. I’m glad to hear you were writing so much.”_

 

 _“It was harder without you,”_ he admits. _“Usually I can ask you what the English word is for something that I only know how to describe in ASL. Sometimes I forget that it’s my second language until I’m trying to describe something in writing.”_

_“You could have come by,”_ she reminds him. He drops his eyes, a little ashamed of taking so long to come to her door.

 

_“I know.”_

 

She doesn’t let him get the rest out. She knows what’s coming and she can’t take anymore apologies. _“Don’t apologize to me again, Fitz.”_

 

_“But I want to—“_

_“I know you’re sorry for forgetting about me,”_ she tells him. _“Just like I’m sorry for forgetting to take our differences into account. I’ve always wanted us to be the same—two halves of something—but in so many ways we’ll never be the same.”_

 

It kind of hurts for her to say it, but he also knows that it’s true. He can’t let her think that he forgot about her, though.

 

_“That isn’t what happened. I didn’t forget about you. I just got caught up in everything else but I never forgot about you. I know you probably don’t believe that but I was trying to figure a lot of stuff out, too.”_

 

 _“We’re different from each other and there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re still my best friend in the world,”_ she says.

 

His head spins with the effort it takes to restrain himself. Ultimately, he loses his internal battle. She looks concerned about him, probably from how ragged his breathing has become.

 

But she doesn’t understand that this is what he’s always needed to hear from her. He didn’t need to watch her protect him from bullies or baby him or try to shield him from the world. He didn’t need to hear that she cares for him or wants to be around him.

 

He needed to hear that she knows that he’s different from her but that she doesn’t care about any of it, that she still picks him, exactly how he is.

_“You’re more than that, Jemma,”_ he says. She steps back. He watches her chest rise and fall rapidly, the same as his.

 

He immediately wants to throw up. This isn’t how he ever planned on telling her, standing on top of discarded notepads in her living room after spending nine days apart. It just kind of came out and now he can’t take it away.

_“What about Daisy?”_

 

Of all the things in the world he thought she would say, that was absolutely last on the list. In fact, it wasn’t even on the list at all.

_“What?”_

 

_“I thought that you and Daisy were—that you had something going on there.”_

 

His jaw drops. _“What? No! Not at all! She’s a friend, that’s it.”_

 

Jemma chews on her lip. “ _Really?”_

_“Of course really,”_ he replies. A little bit of annoyance bubbles up in him. Just like this isn’t the way he planned on telling her, he most definitely never planned on discussing Daisy.

 

_“She’s smart.”_

 

_“Yeah.”_

 

_“She’s funny.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“She’s really pretty.”_

_“Sure.”_

_“She gets it,”_ Jemma says. Her eyes are teary now. _“She gets you.”_

 

 _“You get me,”_ he assures her, stepping into her space again. _“I know it doesn’t always feel like it and maybe there are some things you won’t be able to understand completely, but I know now that you’ll always at least try. Sometimes we get a little mixed up. But Jemma—in middle school, in high school, in this city. I’ve been beside you the whole damn time. We fix everything together.”_

 

He watches her swallow. He sees her eyes dart toward his mouth and before he can question it or think too much about it, he surges forward to kiss her.

 

One of his hands grabs her waist and he feels her hands come up to rest on his neck, her fingertips dragging just behind his ear. It’s clumsy and a little too hard, almost bruising. He’s backed her up against the wall, more aggressively than he had intended, and a few of her papers fall down and flutter to the ground around them.

 

It occurs to him powerfully that this may have been too much too soon. After all, she hadn’t said anything about her feelings for him. She had only questioned him about Daisy. He falls back, his aimless hands finding his hips as he pants from the exertion and adrenaline.

 

He doesn’t get long to catch his breath, though, because Jemma crosses to him in two big steps and tugs him down to kiss him again. It’s softer, less desperate, full of promise and hope and tomorrow.

 

She pulls back and leans her forehead against his, holding onto his biceps like anchors. He keeps his eyes shut, savoring the moment and the feel of her closeness. He had come here with the intention of talking about her research and maybe, just maybe, telling her that he has decidedly not-friendly feelings toward her.

 

This had never been part of the plan. He decides that plans are exceedingly overrated anyhow.

 

When he finally comes to his senses, Jemma is smiling at him, a brilliant grin that’s practically blinding.

 

She holds up her fingers in a sign that absolutely everyone knows.

 

_“I love you.”_

 

He didn’t know that it was possible to be so happy that it’s almost painful, but his ribs feel like they’re going to pull apart with the thrill of it.

 

_“I love you too.”_

 

He swoops in to kiss her again, but she beats him to it by peppering his face with little kisses. He can’t hold back the audible laugh that tumbles out of his throat and he finds that he doesn’t really want to. He stumbles back to her couch and pulls her on top of him, a few of her books digging into his spine.

 

She rolls her eyes and drags him back up, tugging him toward her bed. _“Don’t be silly, Fitz.”_

 

If she’s going to play it that way, then so will he. He grabs her around the waist and flings her onto the bed like he has so many times before during play fights in her childhood bedroom. She bounces slightly on the mattress, bright and overjoyed and giggling. He lowers himself over her and captures her lips again, grinning into her mouth when he feels the rumble of a moan move through her chest and into his.

 

***

 

He wakes up shirtless in her bed, a little bit too warm and his arm tingling from having her lying on top of it. He glances down at her sleeping form and can hardly believe the reality of it all.

 

They hadn’t gone all the way. Neither of them have done that yet and he wants to take their time. To his surprise, it had been Jemma who was harder to convince on that point, although his own anatomy had been a close second.

 

The fact that Jemma actually wants him—and judging from last night, rather desperately so—is something that he can’t stop turning over in his head. They both still have a lot of work to do. He has a lot to unlearn about himself and the way he’s moved through the world. She has a lot to learn about her position in his new community.

 

But he’s sure that they will learn it side by side.

 

He watches her eyes flutter open. She stretches, giving his arm some delightful respite from its painful position, and smiles at him sleepily.

_“Good morning,”_ he says.

 

 _“Morning,”_ she replies, sinking back down into the pillows with a grin.

_“How are you feeling?”_ he asks. She looks content, sure, but the littlest part of him is concerned that in the cold light of day, she might be regretting her decisions.

 

 _“I’m happy,”_ she tells him, and the look in her eyes reflects it. _“I feel kind of drunk with it, actually.”_

 

He can’t even be bothered to hide the utterly pleased grin on his face. He squeezes her against him and doesn’t let go for a long time.

 

 _“Do we need to get up?”_ Jemma asks. She looks up at the clock and her jaw drops. _“We both missed our first class!”_

 

He shakes his head. He really does not care about his classes in this moment. _“I couldn’t care less, Jemma.”_

_“Of course not,”_ she teases. _“You’re an English major.”_

 

 _“I don’t see you getting up for your next class,”_ he shoots back.

 

She shrugs. _“If you miss one, the rest are pointless.”_

 

 _“That’s a lie,”_ he says with a grin. _“Your second class is totally unrelated—“_

 

_“Do you want to stay in bed with me all day or do you want to be right?”_

_“I am completely wrong,”_ he responds. She giggles as he tugs her back down to kiss her. A picture of them sits on her bedside table, taken in his backyard when they were fourteen.

 

Those kids had no idea what was going to happen.

 

Fitz wouldn’t change a second of it.


End file.
